Buying guide
Cartken Courier vs Starship Bot in 2026
Comparing 2 humanoid robots across availability, pricing, capabilities, and verified deployments. Current as of 2026.
| Attribute | No image on file | No image on file |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Cartken | Starship Technologies |
| Form factor | sidewalk | sidewalk |
| Maturity | commercial | commercial |
| Availability | internal-onlyenterprise | internal-onlyenterprise |
| Price | Not announced | Not announced |
| Capability claims | — | — |
| Brain | — | — |
| Verified deployments | 1Cartken | 6 |
| Privacy practices | 6bystander-recording, cloud-upload, data-retention, third-party-sharing, location-tracking, data-deletion-control | 6bystander-recording, cloud-upload, data-retention, third-party-sharing, location-tracking, data-deletion-control |
| Sources on file | 7 | 40 |
Editorial summaries
Cartken Courier
Cartken (founded 2019 by ex-Google 'Bookbot' engineers; CEO Christian Bersch) makes the Cartken Courier (Model C), a six-wheeled sidewalk delivery bot (about 44 pounds and 1.5 cubic feet of payload, 3 to 6 mph), and is the hardware-sale-pivot archetype of the cohort, editorially distinct from Starship and Serve: where they operate their own fleets, Cartken pivoted toward selling vehicles to operator partners. Its partners include Mitsubishi, Uber Eats, and Melco, and its lineup adds a larger industrial Hauler (2025; 660 pounds / 300 kg) and an indoor Runner. It is operator-supervised, not driverless. It has raised about $22.5 million (468 Capital, Magna International, Shell Ventures, Mitsubishi Electric). Cap-flag: the roughly 100 Hauler vehicles cited in the Melco deployment is an aggregator-quoted figure pending direct Cartken or Melco disclosure. As a B2B hardware sale to operator partners, there is no consumer price.
Starship Bot
Starship Technologies (founded 2014 by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis) makes the Starship Bot, a six-wheeled insulated-cargo autonomous sidewalk delivery robot and the captive-service archetype of the sidewalk-delivery cohort. It is operator-supervised Level 4: it runs autonomously on sidewalks with remote human oversight and takeover available, not driverless. Starship operates its own fleet and integrates with delivery apps (Uber Eats, Just Eat, Bolt, Foodora, Grubhub, Wolt) plus grocers and retailers; it does not sell robots to third parties. Operational scale (April 2026, Starship-direct): more than 10 million cumulative autonomous deliveries, 3,000-plus robots, 300-plus service areas across 8 countries, 65-plus US university campuses, and 22 million-plus autonomous kilometers. Funding ran through a Series C led by Plural with more than $280 million cumulative; the valuation is not disclosed, so DEPLOY cap-flags aggregator-quoted valuation figures. As a captive B2B delivery service, there is no consumer price.
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