Avride Sidewalk Bots will deliver this week in the center of Tokyo in a partnership with e-commerce giant Rakuten, the recent commercial expansion of the Yandex spinout to northeast Asia, restaurant orders and food in northeast Asia.
The Austin -based autonomous vehicle start is one of four projects under Nebius Group, a company based in the Netherlands, which was previously called Yandex NV sold his Russian shops in 2024 for about 5.2 billion US dollars.
Since then, Avride has pushed its autonomous vehicle technology development over his sidewalk bots and self -driving cars. And it has made progress, especially through business with large companies such as Uber and now Japan’s rakuten.
Avride has a small commercial sidewalk process Seoul, South KoreaAnd also tests his autonomous vehicles – who still have human safety drivers behind the steering wheel. Last year, the company began the lengthy certification process in Japan to expand its footprint in the region. After completion of the certification, Avride starts commercial business activities in the country. The Japanese start will be small to start – only 10 robots for now, with plans to expand over time.
In the meantime, Avride also scales in the United States. Today the company has about 100 sidewalk bots In operation at Ohio State University through a partnership with a Grubhub.
Last year Avride secured a contract with Uber, which covers the bots of the sidewalk and autonomous cars. The multi-year contract is part of a number of autonomous vehicle partnerships that Uber is locked up last year.
Today Uber eats customers in the city center of Austin, Dallas and Jersey City, who have their meals delivered by Avride robots. The companies are planning to bring along Avride self -driving cars On the Uber platform in Dallas later this year.
