Coco Robotics Adds Veteran Delivery Founder Ralf Wenzel to Board to Accelerate Global Expansion

New updates have been reported about Coco Robotics.

Coco Robotics has appointed Ralf Wenzel, founder of Foodpanda and JOKR and former Delivery Hero executive, to its Board of Directors, signaling a push to scale its urban robot delivery platform globally. The company expects Wenzel’s two decades of last‑mile logistics and marketplace experience across more than 40 countries to directly shape fleet expansion, market entry decisions, and commercial strategy.

Wenzel previously helped take Delivery Hero public in 2017, built JOKR into a leading instant grocery provider in Brazil, and served as a managing partner at SoftBank Group International, advising portfolio companies on rapid, tech‑enabled growth. At Coco, his mandate will include guiding international rollout across continents, deepening partnerships with major food and grocery delivery apps, and supporting moves into broader e‑commerce and logistics use cases.

He highlighted Coco’s potential to improve reliability, efficiency, and delivery costs versus traditional couriers, emphasizing the need to adapt operations to each market’s infrastructure, culture, and consumer behavior. Wenzel said he intends to apply his pattern recognition from building complex urban operations worldwide to help Coco become the fastest‑growing last‑mile robotics player.

Co‑founder and CEO Zach Rash said Wenzel’s background of scaling under operational pressure is critical as Coco shifts from validating its model to building a global platform. Management expects his insights to influence long‑term infrastructure planning as Coco targets deployment of thousands of delivery robots worldwide by year‑end.

Coco is currently ramping its autonomous delivery operations across the U.S. and Europe, with new launches in San Jose, Calif., and Jersey City, N.J., alongside existing networks in Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, and Finnish cities including Helsinki and Turku. The company operates through platforms such as Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Wolt, and reports more than 500,000 zero‑emission deliveries completed since its 2020 founding, using AI and real‑world data to improve route efficiency and support rapid, capital‑light expansion.