Riyadh - Sharikat Mubasher: Pony AI, a global leader in achieving large-scale commercialization of autonomous mobility, and Uber Technologies announced a strategic partnership to deploy Pony AI’s Robotaxis onto the Uber platform.

This partnership is expected to first launch in the Middle East later this year, with a goal of scaling deployments to additional international markets in the future, the company announced in a press release yesterday.

Once available, when a rider requests a qualifying ride on the Uber application, they may be presented with the option to have their trip fulfilled by a Pony AI autonomous vehicle. During the initial pilot phase, these vehicles will have a safety operator onboard until the companies’ fully autonomous commercial launch.

This milestone is part of Pony AI’s global expansion strategy, leveraging its established ecosystem to showcase robust technological readiness.

Pony AI’s seventh-generation autonomous driving system facilitates the mass production of Robotaxis on a more scalable and cost-effective basis. This technological advancement aligns with the strategic goals of the partnership, empowering Uber’s platform to more quickly and safely integrate autonomous vehicles as the collaboration expands to new markets.

James Peng, Co-founder and CEO of Pony AI, affirmed that the partnership with Uber accelerates both companies' shared mission to make autonomous mobility a real, everyday experience for more consumers around the world.

“By combining our proven autonomous systems with Uber’s unparalleled ride-hailing platform, we’re poised to set a new standard for the commercialization of driverless services, starting in the Middle East before expanding to new markets,” Peng added.

For his part, Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, stated that the partnership represents a “meaningful step” towards introducing the benefits of autonomous mobility to the world.

Pony AI leverages its vehicle-agnostic Virtual Driver technology, a full-stack autonomous driving technology that seamlessly integrates Pony AI’s proprietary software, hardware, and services to develop a commercially viable and sustainable business model that enables the mass production and deployment of vehicles across transportation use cases.