Rob Whitten

Post-pitch story

Rob Whitten and Jane Lo both spent years building hardware at places like iRobot, SharkNinja and Amazon Robotics — so when they founded p!ng, they aimed at a problem worth automating: the coffee drive-thru. Their concept is a fully automated coffee trailer — order in a geofenced app, and a robotic system makes your drink, with LIDAR and cameras detecting your window height when you pull up. In October 2024, p!ng launched its first live pilot in Lowell, Massachusetts, drawing coverage from the Boston Globe and local TV news. The company raised a $635,000 pre-seed round including a $100,000 MassRobotics Accelerator grant, was named to The Robot Report's top 100 robotics startups to watch in 2025, and has been running a Wefunder community round that's raised over $440,000 from more than 200 investors. Whitten even headed back to Miami in early 2025 to tape what appears to be a return appearance on the show. The robots are brewing, and p!ng is still very much alive.