Uber is finally bringing sidewalk robot deliveries to the UK, marking a major expansion of its autonomous ambitions.
The company has teamed up with Starship Technologies, the robotics firm behind those small six-wheeled delivery carts you may have seen buzzing around university campuses in the US.
As reported by Bloomberg, the rollout begins this December in the UK, with Leeds and Sheffield serving as the pilot cities. Customers in those areas who order from select merchants on Uber Eats will be able to choose robot delivery, with Starship’s bots capable of covering up to two miles and completing a drop-off in under 30 minutes.
Uber says this is only the start. The company plans a broader European expansion in 2026, followed by a US rollout in 2027, as it moves toward a hybrid ecosystem where human couriers and autonomous vehicles work side by side.
The timing reflects Uber’s shifting business priorities. Deliveries are becoming a near-equal pillar to its ride-hailing segment – analysts expect the delivery unit to account for around 47% of Uber’s gross bookings by 2025. And autonomy is clearly part of the strategy: Uber already partners with various robotics companies to run autonomous deliveries across nine cities in the US and Japan.
Partnering with Starship gives Uber a major foothold as it tests this hybrid future in a competitive European market. Starship currently operates the largest autonomous delivery fleet in the world, with more than 2700 robots active across over 270 locations. The company is already integrated with Uber’s rivals — Bolt in Europe and Grubhub on US college campuses — and recently raised $50 million in Series C funding, pushing it past 9 million completed deliveries.
The move also comes as Uber’s US competitor DoorDash accelerates its presence in Europe following its acquisitions of Deliveroo and Wolt. DoorDash has begun its own robotics pilots this year, starting in Helsinki and expanding to Los Angeles and Chicago.
For Uber, this partnership is a chance to scale up autonomy in markets where competitors are gaining traction, and to give customers a glimpse of what its mixed human-and-robot delivery future looks like.
