Avride sidewalk bots will start delivering restaurant orders and groceries in central Tokyo this week through a partnership with e-commerce giant Rakuten, the latest commercial expansion by the Yandex spinout into Northeast Asia.
The Austin-based autonomous vehicle startup is one of four projects under Nebius Group, a Netherlands-based company formerly called Yandex NV that sold off its Russian businesses in 2024 for about $5.2 billion.
Since then, Avride has pressed forward with its autonomous vehicle technology development via its sidewalk bots and self-driving cars. And it’s made progress, notably by making deals with large corporations like Uber and now Japan’s Rakuten.
Avride has a small commercial sidewalk delivery operation in Seoul, South Korea, and also tests its autonomous vehicles — which still have human safety drivers behind the wheel. Last year, the company started going through the lengthy certification process in Japan in a bid to expand its footprint in the region. Now, with the certification complete, Avride is launching commercial operations in the country. The Japanese launch will be small to start — just 10 robots for now, with plans to expand over time.
Meanwhile, Avride is scaling in the United States as well. Today, the company has about 100 sidewalk delivery bots in operation at Ohio State University through a partnership with Grubhub.
Last year, Avride secured a deal with Uber that covers sidewalk delivery bots and autonomous cars. The multi-year deal is part of a string of autonomous vehicle-related partnerships that Uber has locked in over the past year.
Today, Uber Eats customers in downtown Austin, Dallas, and Jersey City can have their food delivered via one of Avride’s robots. The companies plan to bring Avride self-driving cars onto the Uber platform in Dallas later this year.