London startup PORT has secured €14.5M to develop self-driving delivery robots. The company runs hubs where delivery couriers rent and charge e-bikes.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and venture capital firm Balnord led the round. Existing and new investors also took part. The money combines equity, where investors take a stake in the company, with debt that PORT must repay.
The deal doubles PORT’s total funding to €29M. The company plans to spend the new money on AI Driver, its own driving software, and on the self-driving vehicles that will run that software. It will also hire more people in research and AI.
PORT already runs 24 microhubs across London, Manchester and Birmingham. These are small depots where couriers pick up, charge and return bikes from a fleet of about 3,500 e-bikes. Founder and chief executive Kamil Suda said that “robotised logistics does not start with the robot; it starts with the infrastructure, operations and data”.
Courier Hubs In Car Parks
Suda founded PORT in 2020. In June 2022, the company announced its first London hub, inside a Leicester Square car park run by operator Q-Park. Couriers could rent e-bikes, cargo e-bikes and mopeds there on weekly or monthly subscriptions.
The network now covers 52,000 square feet of space in underground car parks, warehouses and railway arches. PORT supplies the vehicles, parking, charging and maintenance. Each London site holds about 100 bikes, which couriers can rent by subscription or with a daily pass. The company says more than 50,000 riders have registered for its rental service and that its fleet has covered more than 50 million kilometres since 2024.
According to PORT, its London hubs sit within one mile of 92% of the Congestion Charge Zone, the central London area where drivers pay a daily fee. The company says the same network reaches 60% of inner London within two miles.
In March 2026, PORT set up the Urban Microhub Alliance with food delivery company Deliveroo and car park operators Apcoa, Q-Park, Saba and NCP (National Car Parks). The group aims to shift London deliveries away from vans and to curb the use of illegal e-bikes. PORT expects more than one million parcels to pass through the alliance’s hubs in 2026.
PORT also plans to open its first site outside the UK, a microhub in central Paris. It has not given an opening date.
From Food Orders To Parcels
Food delivery couriers have been a core group of PORT’s users. More than 18,000 of them had used its hubs by March 2026, according to the company.
Parcels are a newer line of business. In September 2025, PORT added cargo trailers that couriers can hitch to their e-bikes to carry parcels. The company says its cargo bikes have since delivered more than 300,000 parcels.
The UK’s postal operator Royal Mail already uses PORT’s cargo bikes and trailers for parcel work. The two companies are now developing a new robotic delivery system together, though they have not disclosed the commercial terms.
“The PORT team are providing us with access to frontier technology and expertise,” said Jack Clarkson, managing director of out-of-home at Royal Mail. His unit runs the postal operator’s network of parcel shops, lockers and drop boxes.
Training Robots On Courier Data
With the new funding, PORT is putting more weight on robots. Some of its e-bikes now carry cameras and lidar, a sensor that measures distance with laser light. Computing hardware from chipmaker NVIDIA runs the system on each bike.
As couriers ride, the sensors record kerbs, cyclists, traffic and drop-off points. When a bike returns to a hub, its footage uploads automatically over a fibre connection. PORT then processes the recordings to find street situations it can use to train AI Driver, which it plans to run on its future delivery robots.
Suda said the company had “spent years building that foundation” and was now focusing on “the physical AI and robotics that will run on top of it”. Physical AI is AI that controls machines in the real world.
PORT has not said when its first robots will start deliveries or what they will look like. The company employs 76 people across research, product, operations and field teams, including mechanics.
Robots Already On UK Pavements
Delivery robots are already starting to appear in the UK. In November 2025, delivery robot maker Starship Technologies and Uber Eats announced a partnership that was set to begin in Leeds in December 2025. The two companies said they planned to expand to more European countries in 2026.
Starship’s robots travel on pavements and handle trips of up to two miles. The company said it had completed more than 9 million deliveries across seven countries, with a fleet of more than 2,700 robots.
PORT says it wants to build its robots on hubs it already runs and on data its couriers already collect. Suda’s comments and the EBRD’s backing both point to that existing network as the starting point.
The Investors Behind The Round
The EBRD is a development bank owned by 77 countries, the European Union and the European Investment Bank. It invests in private companies to support economic growth.
The bank pointed to the street data PORT collects. “PORT is actively building that data and already has the infrastructure in place to be able to make better use of it than anyone,” said Ervin Luga, head of venture capital investments at the EBRD.
Polish venture capital firm Balnord backs frontier and dual-use technology across the Baltic Sea region. Frontier technology is new, research-heavy technology, while dual-use technology has both civilian and military uses. In November 2025, the firm said its new fund had passed €70M.
The round adds robot development to a business built on hubs, e-bikes and couriers. For now, that business runs on human riders, while PORT’s robots are still in development with no public launch date.
