Russia’s Yandex JV Agrees With Uber To Spin Off Their Autonomous Car Business In A New Entity

BY Sergiu Tudose | Posted on

Yandex, Russia’s largest internet company, entered into an agreement with Uber to separate their self-driving car business from their ride-hailing and food-tech joint venture.

The new entity, named Yandex Self Driving Group (or Yandex SDG), will be directly owned by the Russian firm and Uber. Yandex will also purchase a portion of Uber’s stake in Yandex SDG, while investing $150 million into the new business.

As a result, Yandex will own 73% of Yandex SDG, while Uber will own 19%, with the remaining 8% reserved for Yandex SDG management and employees.

“We are excited to increase our stake in this strategically important part of our business,” said Arkady Volozh, Yandex CEO. “In just a short period of time, we have achieved breakthrough results in autonomous driving. We firmly believe in the future of autonomous mobility as a safe and cost-effective form of transportation with a vast addressable market. The additional capital that we are investing in SDG will allow it to continue to pursue the R&D and productization of autonomous mobility.”

Yandex has been hard at work developing its own proprietary self-driving tech since 2017 and currently has 130 units in its autonomous vehicle fleet – which together have driven over four million miles (autonomously) across Russia, Israel and the United States.

Since last year, the company has also been developing a delivery robot (the Yandex Rover), aimed at the autonomous delivery of small and medium-sized packages.

“We’ve been developing technology that can be applied to various types of vehicles and that is suitable for different road, traffic and weather conditions around the world,” said Yandex SDG boss Dmitry Polishchuk. “There is still a lot to be done to apply this technology to ride-hailing, food delivery, ecommerce, and many more adjacent categories in the longer-term. The creation of a new company, with significant support from Yandex, positions us well for the further acceleration of our development and to achieve our goal of creating a safe and efficient transportation ecosystem.”

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