Volozh spoke about the launch of Yandex drones, interrupted due to a special operation

According to him, Yandex was going to launch driverless taxis in Moscow “several months” before the launch of Waymo (owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company) in San Francisco. “Journalists were invited to a big event in March 2022, but the launch never took place. People had to quickly pack up all their equipment and leave the country in a matter of weeks,” Volozh said.

The team that worked on the Yandex self-driving car project founded the startup Avride in 2023, Forbes wrote. The company is now based in Massachusetts, according to its website.

Avride belongs to the Nebius group (previously called Yandex NV), headed by Volozh. This is the former parent company of Yandex, which sold the Russian business to a consortium of investors in the summer of 2024. The company withdrew from Yandex shareholders and retained its international business.

In October, Uber announced a “multi-year strategic partnership” with Avride. By the end of 2024, Uber plans to start using Avride courier robots in US cities, and in 2025, unmanned vehicles for transporting passengers.

According to Volozh, Avride now needs to find additional partners, otherwise the company risks financial problems, as Nebius focuses on developing its cloud business. “They have enough budget for this year and next. We finance them, but they need to take advantage of this time to find new partners,” said the businessman.