As artificial intelligence pushes deeper into the physical world, investors are increasingly eyeing robotics as the next big growth frontier. In that context, Serve Robotics Inc. SERV and NVIDIA Corporation NVDA represent two very different ways to play the AI-robotics theme.
One is a focused, early-stage bet on autonomous last-mile delivery with massive upside — but equally meaningful risk. The other is a dominant AI powerhouse whose chips and platforms quietly power much of the global robotics ecosystem. This faceoff pits niche innovation against scale and dominance to answer a key question for investors: which AI robotics stock offers the better risk-reward right now?
The Case for SERV Stock
Serve Robotics is approaching a meaningful scale inflection, driven by rapid fleet growth and improving operating dynamics. During the third quarter, Serve Robotics surpassed the milestone of 1,000 robots deployed nationwide, an operational threshold management views as the shift from experimentation to repeatable execution. This expansion translated into sharply higher delivery volumes while maintaining near-perfect reliability, signaling that the platform can grow without sacrificing service quality. As fleet density rises, Serve Robotics benefits from stronger utilization, faster learning cycles and smoother rollouts in new markets, reinforcing its ability to scale efficiently.
A second pillar of the bullish case is Serve Robotics’ expanding partner ecosystem and national footprint. The company now supports deliveries for thousands of restaurants and has scaled operations across multiple metropolitan hubs, significantly widening its addressable market. Partnerships with major delivery platforms allow robots to operate across multiple channels, which boosts utilization and lowers per-delivery costs. As these relationships deepen, each robot can generate incremental revenues without a proportional increase in expenses, strengthening the long-term economics of the Serve Robotics model.
Technology and data form the third leg of the upside story. Serve Robotics is building a “physical AI” flywheel in which every mile driven adds to a proprietary urban data set that continuously improves autonomy, perception and route planning. The acquisition of Vayu Robotics enhances this advantage by accelerating how quickly real-world data is converted into more capable AI models. Over time, these gains are expected to improve speed, autonomy and efficiency across the fleet, while also opening the door to higher-margin recurring revenue streams from software, platform access and data services layered on top of core delivery operations.
Despite its operational momentum, Serve Robotics remains firmly in an investment phase, with profitability still some distance away. The company continues to incur sizable operating losses as it prioritizes fleet expansion, market launches and heavy R&D spending, leading to elevated cash burn. While management expects scale and efficiency improvements to drive better economics over time, near-term margins remain pressured and execution risk is meaningful. Any slowdown in partner onboarding, delays in improving utilization or regulatory challenges at the city level could push out the timeline for financial inflection, making Serve Robotics a higher-risk proposition for investors.
The Case for NVIDIA Stock
NVIDIA’s core strength lies in its overwhelming dominance of AI infrastructure, which continues to scale even at massive revenue levels. In the latest quarter, the company delivered record revenue growth, driven primarily by surging demand for data center compute and networking. Management emphasized that hyperscalers remain effectively sold out, with GPU utilization at full capacity across both new and prior architectures. This suggests that demand is not only broad-based but also persistent, reinforced by rising capital spending by cloud providers as they shift workloads from traditional CPUs to accelerated computing platforms.
Another major positive is NVIDIA’s expanding product cadence and long-term visibility. The Blackwell platform is ramping faster than prior generations, while the upcoming Rubin architecture is positioned as a meaningful step-function improvement in performance per dollar and performance per watt. Management highlighted unusually strong forward visibility, with hundreds of billions of dollars in expected AI infrastructure revenues through calendar 2026. This rapid, predictable upgrade cycle strengthens customer lock-in and reinforces NVIDIA’s leadership at a time when compute efficiency and total cost of ownership are becoming critical decision factors for customers.
Beyond chips, NVIDIA’s full-stack ecosystem gives it a unique edge in the emerging physical and agentic AI markets. The company is increasingly embedded across cloud platforms, enterprises and robotics applications through its CUDA software, networking and simulation tools such as Omniverse. Management pointed to growing adoption of NVIDIA platforms by robotics developers, manufacturers and autonomous systems builders, positioning physical AI as a multi-billion-dollar growth vector with a much larger long-term opportunity. This breadth allows NVIDIA to benefit not just from model training but also from inference, robotics deployment and real-world AI applications.
How Does Zacks Consensus Estimate Compare for SERV & NVDA?
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for SERV’s 2026 sales implies a 758.1% year-over-year increase. The consensus estimate for the loss per share for 2026 is $1.83, while it is expected to incur a loss of $1.59 in 2025. Moreover, in the past 30 days, loss estimates have remained stable.
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The Zacks Consensus Estimate for NVDA’s fiscal 2027 sales and EPS implies year-over-year growth of 46.8% and 57%, respectively. Earnings estimates for fiscal 2027 have increased in the past 30 days.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Price Performance & Valuation
SERV stock has lost 28.3% in the past year against its sector’s growth of 18.5%. Conversely, NVDA’s shares have risen 34.1% in the same time frame.
Price Performance
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SERV is trading at a forward 12-month price-to-sales ratio of 23.54X, below its median of 30.29X over the last year. NVDA’s forward sales multiple sits at 14.47X, above its median of 11.15X over the same time frame.
P/S (F12M)
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Which Stock to Buy Now?
From an investment standpoint, the contrast between NVIDIA and Serve Robotics highlights two very different risk profiles within the AI-robotics theme. NVIDIA stands out as a buy because it pairs sustained demand visibility with scale, profitability and a full-stack ecosystem that benefits from AI adoption across data centers, robotics and real-world applications, giving investors exposure to physical AI with far less execution risk.
Serve Robotics, meanwhile, has made clear operational progress and is building a compelling long-term platform, but it remains in a heavy investment phase where cash burn, regulatory hurdles and scaling risks could drive volatility. That makes SERV better suited as a hold, appropriate for investors who already own the stock and believe in its long-term upside, but less compelling for fresh capital compared with NVIDIA’s more stable and diversified growth profile.
NVDA currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), whereas SERV carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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