{"id":143670,"date":"2025-09-09T08:51:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T08:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/143670\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T08:51:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T08:51:11","slug":"doordash-ceo-tony-xu-says-path-to-autonomous-deliveries-filled-with-lots-of-pain-and-suffering-but-company-is-nearing-first-inning-of-commercial-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/143670\/","title":{"rendered":"DoorDash CEO Tony Xu says path to autonomous deliveries filled with ‘lots of pain and suffering’ but company is nearing first inning of commercial progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tony Xu<\/a>, cofounder and CEO of food and grocery giant DoorDash<\/a>, doesn\u2019t sugar coat the company\u2019s efforts, and challenges, developing autonomous delivery technologies.<\/p>\n

\u201cCandidly, it\u2019s mostly been filled with lots of pain and suffering,\u201d Xu said in an on-stage interview<\/a> on Monday at Fortune\u2019s Brainstorm Tech<\/a> conference in Park City, Utah.<\/p>\n

DoorDash has been working on autonomy and robotics technology since about 2017, Xu said in what he described as a \u201clong journey.\u201d Any company trying to get involved in autonomous technology and do it at scale must master a variety of different skills, he said: \u201cImagine learning a new sport, but that sport has five different subdomains just to say that you\u2019re a rookie at that sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

You have to build the hardware, develop the software, and fine-tune the delivery network, too\u2014particularly in the instance that an autonomous delivery vehicle ends up getting stuck and needing human intervention. \u201cIt\u2019s very rare that one company is equally good at all of those skills,\u201d Xu said. \u201cI think we have the potential to be one of those companies, but I think we\u2019re still very early in building the competence.\u201d<\/p>\n

DoorDash has been taking a multi-pronged approach<\/a>\u2014partnering with other companies on things like robot and drone deliveries, but also developing some of its own autonomous technology in-house. For example, DoorDash is working with Coco Robotics to test out robots that transport food and groceries via sidewalks in Los Angeles and Chicago, and it has been conducting drone deliveries with Alphabet<\/a> drone subsidiary, Wing, in Australia. Internally, the company has its own arm called \u201cDoorDash Labs\u201d where the company is working on proprietary delivery robots.<\/p>\n

Xu said that those long-term investments the company started making eight years ago have started to pay off. Those investments are \u201cstarting to actually get to maybe the first inning of commercial progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked where customers could experience some of these forms of autonomy in the U.S., Xu specified that there are no formal autonomous commercial operations just yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have it yet operating today. A lot of it is in test forms,\u201d Xu said. But he pointed out that drone delivers are happening in Australia and that DoorDash has started to get the permits necessary to start doing drone deliveries in \u201cselect cities\u201d in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Thus far, there is no specific timeline\u2014or, at least, not one Xu is ready to talk about publicly.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s see how fast the team can deliver,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

More from Brainstorm Tech<\/p>\n

Lyft CEO says company will save $200M in insurance costs from California worker unionization deal<\/a><\/p>\n

Jeffrey Katzenberg says legislation to protect children from online harms is unlikely: \u2018It took 80 years\u2019 to pass seatbelt laws<\/a><\/p>\n

Fortune Global Forum returns Oct. 26\u201327, 2025 in Riyadh. CEOs and global leaders will gather for a dynamic, invitation-only event shaping the future of business. Apply for an invitation.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony Xu, cofounder and CEO of food and grocery giant DoorDash, doesn\u2019t sugar coat the company\u2019s efforts, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[21480,89313,28,48122,89314,6066,21481,8007],"class_list":["post-143670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-autonomous","tag-brainstorm-tech","tag-business","tag-doordash","tag-drone-deliveries","tag-fortune-500","tag-fortune-500-companies","tag-robotics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}