Russian internet and mobility company Yandex will acquire Uber’s stake in its self-driving technology group as well as its joint ventures.
Under the $1 billion deal, Yandex will receive:
- Uber’s 33.5% ownership in Yandex Eats, Yandex Lavka and Yandex Delivery – giving Yandex ownership in all three businesses.
- Uber’s 18.2% interest in Yandex Self-Driving Group, giving it 100% ownership.
- An additional 4.5% interest in MLU, Yandex's mobility business, giving Yandex about 71% ownership.
- An option to acquire the remaining 29% interest Uber has in MLU.
- An extension of the current license for the right to use the Uber brand in Russia and other countries through August 2030.
Yandex has been one of Russia’s pioneers in developing delivery services and self-driving vehicles, recently introducing delivery robots with Grubhub to provide access to food on college campuses in the U.S. The company’s self-driving group also earlier this year touted more than 6 million testing miles in the snow with autonomous vehicles.
The JVs
Yandex Eats is a food and grocery delivery service that is available in 170 cities in Russia. The service offers 30 to 60-minute deliveries from 35,000 restaurants and more than 2,900 stores.
Yandex Lavka is a hyperlocal convenience story delivery model offering 15 minute deliveries to 360 dark stores in Russia and Israel.
Yandex Delivery is a last-mile logistics company offering on-demand delivery from 20,000 businesses in Russia. The business is focused on same-day and next-day delivery products and just this year completed more than 200,000 daily deliveries and is on pace to reach 1 million daily deliveries by 2023.
The Self-Driving Group includes a 170 autonomous fleet that has driven more than 8 million autonomous miles on public roads in various weather and road conditions across Russia, Israel and the U.S.
Uber’s changing business
Uber has been very active over the past year, shoring up its core business strategies. This includes selling its home grown self-driving business to startup Aurora earlier this year.
While the sell-off to Yandex continues to follow Uber’s direction in leaving the autonomous technology to others, it has doubled-down on other parts of its business such as acquiring Postmates for $2.65 billion last year.
The combination of Postmates and Uber Eats would claim a 37% share of food delivery sales in the U.S. with DoorDash remaining the largest player with 45% of the share and Grubhub with 17% of the share, according to Edison Trends.
