A brand new partnership goals to take an enormous chew out of the scourge of single-use plastic. With the assistance of some robots and economies of scale, it is a constructive step in an issue that appears wholly intractable. Compostable packaging firm Zume, which has innovated the manufacture of excessive output molded fiber packaging utilizing robots, is becoming a member of forces with sustainable packaging firm Transcend Packaging. By becoming a member of forces, the businesses try to rally an efficient base of capabilities and distribution to tackle the unfathomable may of the plastics business. At the moment, single-use plastic is a $320B business.

Greg Nichols covers robotics, AI, and AR/VR for ZDNet. A full-time journalist and author, he writes about tech, travel, crime, and the economy for global media outlets and reports from across the U. Robots are getting in on the effort to curb our addiction to single-use plastics. A new partnership between one of the largest industrial robotics manufacturers and a compostable packaging company points the way to an efficient and cost-effective green packaging revolution. ABB Robotics has signed an agreement to collaborate with California-based Zume, which makes the compostable packaging that's becoming more commonplace as an alternative to plastics. ABB's robotic cells will help Zume speed up and scale production of 100% compostable packaging made from plant-based agricultural material.

A leading autonomous pizza machine developer is teaming up with an international pizza brand run by world-renowned chef Anthony Carron. The pandemic has been a boon for autonomous dining as takeout culture and convenience remain priorities. Restaurants have struggled to adapt to the labor demands and unpredictability of the new paradigm. Delivery options open up new opportunities to meet customers where they are, but maintaining quality is paramount. At 800 Degrees the team believed they needed to do more to future-proof the brand, and Chef Carron saw the promise of automation when a trusted industry colleague, Massimo Noja De Marco, reached out to discuss Piestro, his automated pizza venture.

You wouldn't be the first person to roll your eyes if told that a Silicon Valley startup that uses robots to make pizza is worth almost $2 billion. Nor would you be the first person to question aloud how that same startup, a year later, could soon double in valuation. But indeed, Recode has learned that this startup, Zume Inc., is in talks with investors to be valued at about $4 billion in a new round of fundraising, according to people familiar with the matter. One part of the story that isn't so surprising: One of Zume's biggest investors is SoftBank, the controversial investor behind WeWork and Uber that has become emblematic of Silicon Valley's excesses. SoftBank pumped $375 million into Zume just last year.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a vague, slightly tech-y term that is overused by marketing departments trying to show some bona fides. But if you want some real insights on what artificial intelligence is and what it can do, then you should check out these talks that Chris Satchell of Zume and Erik Andrejko of Evolv (the venture arm of Kraft-Heinz) each did onstage at our recent Smart Kitchen Summit. But before you can begin talking about AI you must understand the importance of data. Before you can get into algorithms you need clean, tagged data that is centralized. He recommends that you don't spread out your data teams across the company, and instead cluster them together to get the best results.

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.

The Verdict: The human chefs hired to consult on the menu at Creator seem almost superfluous; their powerful and pungent house sauces overshadow the excellent grass-fed patty, which is ground to order, loosely packed and expertly seared by the machine. With its copper conveyor belts, sculptural blond wooden base and glass tubes stacked with fresh buns and gleaming produce, the burger bot is a marvel of engineering and aesthetics capable of churning out 120 burgers an hour. The room is clean and bright; the sourcing of ingredients is aggressively local. But the real promise of Creator is its value proposition: At $6 a pop, it offers a truly great burger at a fast-food price. The Experience: The first robot-staffed bar in the world, inside the Miracle Mile Shops on the Las Vegas Strip, is a twinkly-lit, garage-chic space.

SoftBank Group Corp. is in talks to invest from $500 million to $750 million in Zume Inc., a startup that makes and delivers fresh pizzas with the help of robots, according to people familiar with the conversations. Zume owns a patent for delivery trucks capable of cooking food while en route to customers. The startup's proprietary trucks are loaded in part by robots, and have ovens that fire up on demand via a remote cloud signal. The technology allows Zume to operate legally despite some laws preventing food truck companies from preparing food while a delivery vehicle is in motion. In addition to delivering pizza, Zume creates technology to manage perishable supply chain logistics and sees an opportunity to partner with companies that wish to provide freshly cooked menu items to customers.

Arriving at Creator, a new restaurant located on the ground floor of an office building on downtown San Francisco's Folsom Street, feels like walking into a catalog. Sleek, wooden communal tables with high white stools line one end of the room, with a bookshelf full of hand-picked culinary books against the wall and modern light fixtures overhead. It's what you would have imagined a restaurant eventually looking like if you watched a lot of The Jetsons. Those machines, with large transparent glass casings and ingredients in cylindrical tubes, are Creator's burger-making robots. Each 14-foot device contains around 350 sensors and 20 microcomputers to produce the best, freshest, locally sourced cheeseburger that $6 can get you in America's most expensive city.

Fears of the rise of robots swooping in to steal jobs abound, stoked by the confluence of artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies that automate routine tasks traditionally performed by humans. The reality is that job replacement will happen more gradually than the media headlines suggest, and eventually AI will create more jobs than it eliminates, say Gartner researchers. "I try to step back and wait for the boomerang because there always will be one," says Gartner analyst Craig Roth, of the hype surrounding job cannibalization via automation. "Once it goes too far to one side, people wake up and realize, 'you know, maybe it's not that bad.'" Make no mistake, AI and robotics will have a profound impact on the job market long term.