Zume, the robotic pizza maker, is now valued at more than US $2 billion, thanks to its latest round of investment. According to The Wall Street Journal, this latest infusion of funds--$375 million--came entirely from SoftBank; and the Japanese conglomerate apparently has another $375 million at the ready should Zume need it. The valuation, in Silicon Valley terms, makes the new company a unicorn, one of the rare breed of startups thought to be worth over $1 billion. Zume, based in Mountain View, Calif., launched three years ago. The company set out to revolutionize pizza delivery by turning pizza-making over to robots, and then cooking the pizza in the back of delivery vans in ovens controlled through cloud-based software.

Alex took us to the wilds of Seaside, California, where some cheeky car owners and tinkerers exhibited decidedly cruddy vehicles, their riposte to the ultra-fancy Concours d'Elegance held the same weekend in neighboring Pebble Beach. Every year, the Concours d'Lemons showcases non-newsworthy cars made fabulous by a little human ingenuity. Witness, par exemple, an unremarkable 1976 Ford Pinto transformed by its owner's insistence on dressing up as a priest, chugging mimosas, and spewing terrible altar boy jokes. Jack checked out Ford's fun, new autonomous vehicle project, delivering Domino's pizzas to the very hungry denizens of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The catch: The car isn't autonomous at all, just dressed up to look like an AV.

"One of the things that we have always focused on is how to create a system that works for both parties," Zume Pizza co-founder Julia Collins, told Engadget. "How do we create a system that's stable and predictable, which are great conditions for machines, but flexible and collaborative, which are great conditions for human beings?" Robots are great at repetitive tasks -- like moving pizza in and out of an 800-degree oven 1,000 times a day -- so the goal is not end-to-end automation because that's not what's going to create better food for the customer." Rather than hand-toss dough balls into their circular pizza shape, which can be tiresome and mind-numbingly repetitive for human chefs, a customized hydraulic press, dubbed Doughbot, smashes the ball into shape.

Looking at its storefront, you wouldn't expect Zume pizza to be the kind of business gunning to revolutionize the food-delivery business. Tucked into a quiet commercial park in Mountain View, California, next to a defunct flower shop -- which now serves as the company's engineering bay -- Zume looks more like the countless IT startups that dot Silicon Valley than a pizzeria. One look in the building's kitchen facility belies its benign facade: Instead of chefs tossing dough and slopping sauce, the company has installed a human-robot hybrid workforce that can crank out as many as 400 pizzas an hour and can reportedly have them to your door in a fraction of the time (and price) as the competition. "One of the things that we have always focused on is how to create a system that works for both parties," Zume Pizza co-founder Julia Collins, told Engadget. "How do we create a system that's stable and predictable, which are great conditions for machines, but flexible and collaborative, which are great conditions for human beings?"

WELLINGTON – The world's first pizza drone delivery was claimed Wednesday by the New Zealand division of fast food giant Domino's as it looks to grab a slice of a potentially hot future market. Domino's said it used an unmanned aerial vehicle to deliver two pizzas to a customer at Whangaparaoa, just north of Auckland. The firm's boss Don Meij said drones are set to become an essential part of pizza deliveries. "They can avoid traffic congestion and traffic lights, and safely reduce the delivery time and distance by traveling directly to customers' homes," he said. Today's successful delivery was an important proof of this concept."

A father was shot and killed late Tuesday after he opened the front door of his Woodland Hills home expecting a pizza delivery, officials said. The 37-year-old man was at home in the 4900 block of Medina Drive with his wife and young daughter at 11:50 p.m. when he answered the front door. A Los Angeles police detective told KTLA-TV they think the man opened the door because he had ordered a pizza. Instead, he was met by unidentified assailants. That's when police said he was shot and killed outside his home.

Domino's seems to be trying to master the sneaky tech move. It has deployed an attention-getting, flashy toy that, truth be told, has very little to do with technology and everything to do with making consumers curious enough to order its less-than-delectable pizzas. We've talked about it with its oven cars, a huge fake button that is supposed to be about ordering but really isn't and a social media purchasing campaign that was tricky marketing at its best. I know that, because I think we all should order good-tasting pizzas from local pizzerias, I shouldn't help promote these efforts. But Domino's appears to know how to get to me: It is now using an R2D2-like robot to deliver pizzas.