A company designs robots capable of preparing 25,000 pizzas per month.

XRobotics Pizza Making Robot

 A company designs robots capable of preparing 25,000 pizzas per month.

XRobotics believes it has successfully persuaded pizza restaurants to adopt robots.

The San Francisco-based robotics company has designed a tabletop robot called xPizza Cube, which is roughly the size of a stackable washing machine and uses machine learning to add sauce, cheese, and pepperoni to pizza dough.

These machines, which are available for rent for $1,300 per month for three years, can prepare up to 100 pizzas per hour and can be modified to accommodate various sizes and types of pie, such as Detroit and Chicago deep-dish pies, according to a report published by TechCrunch and reviewed by Al Arabiya Business.

"This saves about 70%, sometimes 80%, of staff time," said Denis Rodionov, co-founder and CEO of XRobotics.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

He added, "It's repetitive work. If you have a pepperoni pizza, you need to put 50 pepperoni slices in one after the other."

XRobotics isn't the only company trying to introduce robotics into the restaurant industry, nor is it the only one focused on pizza.

Zumi is the most prominent pizza robot company, if it can be considered at.

The company raised over $420 million in venture capital for its robotic pizza trucks before shifting its focus to sustainable packaging in 2020 and closing its doors completely in 2023.

Rodionov argues that they've succeeded where other companies haven't, because they're not seeking to radically change the pizza-making process, as Zumi did, but rather developing technologies that help existing pizza makers save time and effort.

By developing assistive technologies rather than alternatives, Rodionov said they were able to keep their machine small enough to fit into existing kitchens and at a price point that would appeal to pizzerias—from small shops to large chains, both of which the company counts as customers.

XRobotics launched in 2019 and rolled out the first version of its technology in 2021.

Its first robot was much larger, capable of handling more than 20 toppings, and faced the same problems as its competitors.

"We ran a real trial in the restaurant with our huge machine," Rodionov said. "We learned a lot from that and discovered we needed a very small and compact solution."

XRobotics launched its current model in 2023.

The company declined to disclose the number of customers, saying its robots produce 25,000 pizzas per month, but it's difficult to calculate how many customers that translates to.

The startup recently raised $2.5 million in a seed funding round led by FinSight Ventures, with participation from SOSV, MANA Ventures, and Republic Capital.

Rodionov said the company will use the capital to produce more units and install more robots for customers.

Rodionov added that XRobotics is committed to the pizza industry, at least for now, given the sheer size of the market—there are more than 73,000 pizza chains in the United States alone.

The company plans to expand to Mexico and Canada later.

"I love pizza, and so does my co-founder," Rodionov said. "We've probably tested every type of pizza in San Francisco. We also test pizza in New York and Chicago."

Rodionov added that Detroit pizza, known for its square shape and crispy cheesy crust, is his favorite.