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Avride sidewalk bot will bug out delivering restaurant orders and groceries in central Tokyo this week through a partnership with e - commerce titan Rakuten , the latest commercial-grade expansion by the Yandex spinout into Northeast Asia .
The Austin - ground autonomous vehicle inauguration is one of four projection under Nebius Group , a Netherlands - found company formerly called Yandex NV thatsold off its Russian businessesin 2024 for about $ 5.2 billion .
Since then , Avride has pressed forward with its autonomous vehicle engineering science developing via its sidewalk bots and self - driving car . And it ’s made progress , notably by take a crap spate with magnanimous potbelly like Uber and now Japan ’s Rakuten .
Avride has a small commercial-grade sidewalk legal transfer operation inSeoul , South Korea , and also tests its autonomous vehicle — which still have human safety drivers behind the steering wheel . Last year , the society begin go through the protracted certification process in Japan in a bidding to flesh out its footprint in the realm . Now , with the credential complete , Avride is set up commercial operations in the land . The Nipponese launch will be lowly to start — just 10 robots for now , with program to expand over time .
Meanwhile , Avride is scaling in the United States as well . Today , the caller has about100 sidewalk delivery botsin operation at Ohio State University through a partnership with Grubhub .
Last yr , Avride assure a wad with Uber that covers sidewalk delivery bots and autonomous machine . The multi - year spate is part of a train of autonomous vehicle - tie in partnership that Uber has locked in over the past twelvemonth .
Today , Uber Eats customer in downtown Austin , Dallas , and Jersey City can have their intellectual nourishment delivered via one of Avride ’s robots . The companies be after to bringAvride ego - driving carsonto the Uber platform in Dallas later on this year .
