Avride Sidewalk Bots will begin to deliver restaurant orders and grocery stores in the center of Tokyo this week thanks to a partnership with the electronic commerce giant Rakuten, the latest commercial expansion of the Yandex Spinout in Northeast Asia.
The startup of autonomous vehicles based in Austin is one of the four projects of the Nebius group, a Dutch company previously called Yandex NV which sold its Russian activities in 2024 for around 5.2 billion dollars.
Since then, Avride has advanced its development of autonomous vehicle technologies via its sidewalk bots and autonomous cars. And that has made progress, in particular by concluding agreements with large companies like Uber and now Rakuten in Japan.
Avride has a small commercial sidewalk delivery operation in Seoul, South KoreaAnd also tests its autonomous vehicles – who still have human safety drivers driving. Last year, the company began to go through the long certification process in Japan to extend its imprint in the region. Now, with complete certification, Avride launches commercial operations in the country. The Japanese launch will be small to start – only 10 robots for the moment, with plans to develop over time.
Meanwhile, Avride is also across the United States. Today, the company has on 100 sidewalk delivery bots In operation at the Ohio State University thanks to a partnership with Grubhub.
Last year, Avride concluded an agreement with Uber which covers the sidewalk delivery and autonomous cars. The multi -year agreement is part of a series of autonomous partnerships linked to the vehicles that Uber has locked in the past year.
Today, Uber eats customers in downtown Austin, Dallas and Jersey City can have their food delivered via one of the Avride robots. Companies plan to provide independent cars with the Uber platform in Dallas later this year.
