Telecommunications and internet group SoftBank has invested $375m in US-based food delivery services provider Zume at a $1.5bn pre-money valuation, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.
SoftBank is expected to add another $375m for a second close, according to a person familiar with the matter, and a source confirmed the valuation to TechCrunch. It is investing the money through the $97.7bn Vision Fund it manages.
Zume’s lead product is Zume Pizza, a pizza delivery service designed from the ground up to be sustainable, using fresh, additive-free ingredients and a scalable end-to-end system intended to cut the time and distance involved in sourcing ingredients.
The company utilises technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence in its business in order to automate part of the preparation process, and TechCrunch reports that it owns a patent for trucks capable of preparing pizzas while moving.
The Zume Pizza model is now set to be rolled out and licensed to operators in other food industries, an expansion likely to be supported by the SoftBank funding.
The company raised $48m from nine undisclosed investors in October 2017 according to a regulatory filing, following $22.7m in December 2016 according to an earlier filing. Its earlier investors include AME Cloud Ventures, Maveron, SignalFire and Kortschak Investments.
