SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 23, 2026--
Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: UBER) today announced the launch of Uber Autonomous Solutions, a comprehensive suite of unique services and capabilities that are already helping partners to build and successfully commercialize autonomous vehicles in multiple markets around the world.
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“Autonomous technology has remarkable potential to make transportation safer and more affordable,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO. “Innovation in autonomy is moving quickly, but meaningful commercialization will take much longer. For more than a decade, Uber has helped set the standard for on-demand mobility and built the capabilities that make ‘push a button and get a ride’ work at global scale. With Uber Autonomous Solutions, we’re externalizing these hard-won competencies for our partners.”
Beyond just getting access to Uber’s leading demand marketplace, Uber Autonomous Solutions goes further—providing the capabilities required for true end-to-end commercialization, reducing cost per mile while increasing speed to market. They also bring comprehensive product development and support capabilities, designed to make autonomous trips more reliable for users and more economical for operators.
“AV tech teams should be able to focus on what they do best: building software that can safely power an autonomous world,” said Sarfraz Maredia, Global Head of Autonomous Mobility and Delivery. “Uber Autonomous Solutions is designed to complement their strengths by providing operational depth wherever they need it–whether that’s demand generation, rider experience, customer support, or managing the day-to-day realities of running a real-world fleet. When partners plug into Uber’s network, they can scale more efficiently, operate more reliably, and move faster.”
Uber Autonomous Solutions is organized across three areas: infrastructure, user experience, and fleet operations.
Infrastructure solutions
Autonomous vehicles can’t hit the road without the right infrastructure. Uber provides the digital and physical foundations—combining data, mapping, regulatory access, and financing–to help partners deploy autonomy smoothly at scale.
User experience solutions
Bringing AVs to full-scale adoption will require the kind of end-to-end user experience Uber is known for. With a large global footprint and over a decade of expertise, we’re helping partners deliver the autonomous products customers demand.
Fleet operations solutions
Successful autonomous commercialization requires that AV fleets run at peak efficiency. With depot tooling, AV-specific insurance, and real-time insights, Uber keeps fleet operators informed and in control, so their operations experience less interruption.
As autonomy advances, the defining challenge will be turning this incredible technology into a scaled service people can trust, every day, and in every kind of environment. Uber Autonomous Solutions is built to bridge the gap between breakthroughs and ubiquity, helping partners to launch faster, operate more reliably, and scale more efficiently, with the effortless user experience riders have come to expect from Uber.
“Scaling autonomous ride-hailing requires more than vehicle technology—it requires strong operational insight and customer support,” said Dmitry Polishchuk, CEO at Avride. “Uber’s platform data helps inform deployment decisions and ODD expansion, making sure autonomous vehicles are introduced where they can deliver the greatest value to riders. Combined with Uber’s robust rider support infrastructure, this creates the operational foundation needed to scale reliably.”
"Nuro’s universal autonomy platform enables our partners to scale autonomy responsibly, and a rider-centric experience is critical to achieving full-scale consumer trust and adoption," said Andrew Chapin, COO at Nuro. "Uber has done excellent work designing an in-vehicle experience that will deliver the intuitive in-car interface riders expect. Nuro is proud to help bring that experience to life by integrating our real-time driving visualization into the Nuro-Lucid-Uber robotaxi."
“Wayve’s AV2.0 approach is built on learning directly from real-world data,” said Kaity Fischer, VP Commercial and Operations at Wayve. “Our foundation model architecture allows us to unlock value from large-scale, diverse datasets to power any vehicle, anywhere, safely at scale. Uber’s multi-sensor and dash cam data across global markets adds critical diversity and complexity to our training, accelerating commercialization and helping turn breakthrough AI into products people can trust.”
“Our partnership with Uber reflects how WeRide’s advanced L4 autonomous driving technology can be deployed at scale through proven operational performance across international markets,” said Dr. Tony Han, Founder and CEO at WeRide. “WeRide delivers a fully integrated autonomous solution spanning the AV stack, vehicle integration, and large-scale fleet operations to support safe, reliable, fully driverless Robotaxi services. Uber Autonomous Solutions complements these capabilities by supporting demand generation, rider experience, and customer operations. Together, this collaboration enables commercial Robotaxi deployments in cities including Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Riyadh.”
About Uber
Uber’s mission is to create opportunity through movement. We started in 2010 to solve a simple problem: how do you get access to a ride at the touch of a button? More than 72 billion trips later, we're building products to get people closer to where they want to be. By changing how people, food, and things move through cities, Uber is a platform that opens up the world to new possibilities.
Uber Autonomous Solutions
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The world’s only flightless parrot species was once thought to be doomed by design. The kakapo is too heavy, too slow and, frankly, too delicious to survive around predators, and takes a shamelessly relaxed approach to reproduction.
But the nocturnal and reclusive New Zealand native bird ’s fate is teetering toward survival after an unlikely conservation effort that has coaxed the population from 50 to more than 200 over three decades. This year, with a bumper crop of the strange parrot’s favorite berries prompting a rare enthusiasm for mating, those working to save the birds hope for a record number of chicks in February, which would move the kakapo closer to defying what was not long ago believed to be certain extinction.
Kakapo live on three tiny, remote islands off New Zealand’s southern coast and chances to see them in the wild are scarce. This breeding season has launched one of the birds to internet fame through a livestreamed video of her underground nest, where a chick was expected to hatch this week.
The kakapo is a majestic creature that can live for 60 to 80 years. But they’re undoubtedly weird to look at.
Birds can weigh over 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds). They have owllike faces, whiskers, and mottled green, yellow and black plumage that mimics dappled light on the forest floor.
That’s where the flightless parrot lives, which has made its survival complicated.
“Kakapo also have a really strong scent,” said Deidre Vercoe, the operations manager for the Department of Conservation’s kakapo program. “They smell really musky and fruity — gorgeous smell.”
The pungent aroma was bad news for the parrots when humans arrived in New Zealand hundreds of years ago. The introduction of rats, dogs, cats and stoats, as well as hunting by people and destruction of native forest habitats, drove species of the country’s flourishing flightless birds — the kakapo among them — to near or complete extinction.
By 1974, no kakapo were known to exist. Conservationists kept looking, however, and in the late 1970s, a new population of the birds was discovered.
Reversing their fortunes hasn’t been simple.
One reason the kakapo population has grown slowly is that its breeding is, like everything about the birds, peculiar. Years or even decades can pass between successful clutches of eggs.
A breeding season only happens every two to four years, in response to bumper crops of fruit from the native rimu trees the parrots favor, which last happened in 2022. A huge food source is needed for chicks to survive but it’s not known exactly how adult birds become aware of an abundant harvest.
“They’re probably up there in the canopy assessing the fruiting,” said Vercoe. “When there’s a large crop developing, they somehow tune into that.”
That’s when things get really strange. Male kakapo position themselves in dug-out bowls in the ground and emit sonorous booming sounds followed by noises known as “chings,” which sound like the movement of rusty bedsprings.
The deep booms, which on clear nights can be heard across the forest, attract female kakapo to the bowls. Females can lay up to four eggs before raising their chicks alone.
Since January, admirers of the birds have had a rare glimpse into the process through a livestream showing the underground nest of 23-year-old kakapo Rakiura on the island of Whenua Hou, where she has laid three eggs, two of them fertile. So precarious is the species’ survival that the eggs were exchanged for fake replacements while the real ones were incubated indoors.
A technician on Tuesday replaced the fake eggs with the first near-hatching egg. The kakapo kept her distance while the switch was made but quickly returned to the nest, seemingly unperturbed. The second real egg is expected to be added within days.
Perhaps the only thing stranger than the kakapo is the lengths to which New Zealanders have gone to save it. Quadrupling the population over the past three decades has required their relocation to three remote, predator-free offshore islands and the micromanaging of the parrots’ every romantic entanglement.
“We do what we can to make sure we don’t lose any further genetic diversity,” Vercoe said. “We manage that carefully through having the best matches possible on each island.”
Each bird has a name and is monitored by a small backpack tracker; if a bird vanishes, they’re nearly impossible to find. With the kakapo still critically endangered, there’s little prospect of conservation efforts ending anytime soon, although those working with the birds are easing their hands-on management each breeding season.
The painstaking work to preserve the species might seem odd to outsiders, but the parrot is just one of many spirited and strange avians in a country where birds reign supreme. The only native land mammals are two types of bat, so New Zealand’s birds, which evolved eccentrically before human and predator arrival, have become beloved national symbols.
“We don’t have the Eiffel Tower or the pyramids, but we do have kakapo and kiwi,” Vercoe said. “It’s a real New Zealand duty to save these birds.”
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, a Dept. of Conservation staff member holds an egg for candling of a Kakapo egg on Whenua Hou Island, New Zealand, Feb. 2026. (Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, a Dept. of Conservation staff member checks the size of a Kakapo egg on Whenua Hou Island, New Zealand, Feb. 2026. (Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, a Dept. of Conservation staff member holds Kakapa chicks Tiwhiri A1 and Tiwhiri A2 on Anchor Island Pukenui, New Zealand, Feb. 2026. (Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, Kakapo, Kohengi sits with her three eggs, on Anchor Island, Pukenui, New Zealand, Feb. 3, 2026. (Andrew Digby/Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
