In the U.S., robot pizza investments have returned to the spotlight because of high equipment costs and supplier risks. Two pizza robots used by Seattle's Moto Pizza were left without technical support after supplier Picnic abruptly shut down in May. Lee Kindell, the restaurant's founder and CEO, said the machines, worth a total of $160,000, had effectively become unusable, prompting him to question the financial resilience of such partnerships.

The problem is not limited to a single business. The exits of companies that previously operated in the robot pizza space, including Zume, Pazzi and Basil Street, known for pizza vending machines, suggest the industry has not reached the scale once expected. Although fast-food restaurants are seen as a natural fit for automation, production precision and operational continuity have proved major obstacles in practice.

According to Sara Senatore, senior restaurant analyst at Bank of America, cooking robots can sometimes place ingredients in the wrong spots. By contrast, human workers are still considered highly efficient in pizza production. The picture suggests that restaurant investors need to factor in not only labor costs, but also downtime and service disruptions when machines fail.

Still, the push for automation is far from over. Kindell said a system he previously used at T-Mobile Park cut the number of workers needed for pizza production from about 10 to 2, while other employees were redeployed to customer-facing and sales support roles. He also said he is working on his own robot system inspired by 3D printing that would produce square-pan pizzas, and that, if all goes to plan, a working version could be ready by the summer of 2027.

New investments are also continuing. Canadian company Appetronix installed a robot pizza unit last year for the Donatos chain at John Glenn Columbus International Airport in Ohio, operating 24/7. The company aims to produce one pizza per minute from these machines in the long run. To reach that goal, it is working on ways to cut saucing time from the current 9.5 seconds to 1.5 seconds, as well as options for slicing pizzas with lasers and ultrasound instead of knives.

Despite market failures, value creation on the intellectual property side continues. More than 300 patents from the defunct Zume were acquired by California-based Miso Robotics. The deal shows that even startups that do not achieve direct commercial success can still leave economic value in the technology development chain.

The sector's core divide is becoming clearer: chain restaurants are looking for repeatable quality and speed, while some operators are emphasizing handcrafted products and human interaction. For that reason, robot pizza technology is more likely to spread in limited areas where standardized production matters than to transform the entire market in the near term.