Pony.ai (NASDAQ: PONY; HKEX: 2026) and Uber (NYSE: UBER) said on August 14, 2026, that they are expanding their partnership to deploy more than 2,000 Pony.ai robotaxis across five European cities. The agreement builds on the companies' existing robotaxi service in Zagreb, Croatia, and is Pony.ai's largest confirmed robotaxi commitment outside China to date. Four additional European cities will be named in phases rather than all at once, and the companies also said they will deepen cooperation in the Middle East. Pony.ai completed a dual-primary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in early November 2025, months after its original Nasdaq debut, in what local media described as the largest autonomous-driving IPO of 2025.

The expansion follows a partnership Pony.ai and Uber first announced in May 2025. That agreement led to the launch of Europe's first commercial robotaxi service in Zagreb on April 8, 2026, run jointly with Croatian mobility company Verne. Riders currently book those trips through Verne's own app, and the companies said Zagreb service will also become bookable directly inside the Uber app.

The partnership runs on what Pony.ai calls a fleet co-building model that splits robotaxi operations into three roles. Pony.ai supplies the Level 4 autonomous driving technology and its operating experience, Uber supplies booking, payment, customer service and its combined human-driver-and-robotaxi network, and a local partner, Verne in Zagreb's case, handles day-to-day fleet management. Vehicle financing and ownership arrangements can differ from city to city under that structure.

Pony.ai founder and CEO James Peng called the expanded deal a new phase in the companies' relationship. "This expanded agreement marks an important new phase in the partnership between Pony.ai and Uber," Peng said, framing it as a shared commitment to bringing robotaxi service to more European cities.

Uber's global head of autonomous mobility and delivery, Sarfraz Maredia, described the goal in similar terms. He said the next chapter for the industry is about moving from individual robotaxi launches to commercial operations that can be replicated quickly across markets, drawing on Uber's local market experience and its mixed fleet of human drivers and robotaxis.

The vehicles behind the expansion are Pony.ai's seventh-generation robotaxis, which the company detailed in an April 24, 2026 announcement. Pony.ai said it is targeting a total vehicle cost, including the autonomous driving hardware, of under 230,000 CNY (c. $34,100) by 2027, after cutting the bill-of-materials cost of that hardware by 70% compared with the prior generation.

One seventh-generation model, a robotaxi built on Toyota's (TYO: 7203) bZ4X platform, has already received an on-road testing permit in Guangzhou. Pony.ai said its Guangzhou fleet reached city-wide unit-economics breakeven based on two-week average figures as of November 23, 2025, with Gen-7 vehicles there averaging 232 paid orders per day. Chinese media reports have put the breakeven threshold itself at roughly 23 rides and 299 CNY (c. $44) in daily revenue per vehicle, well below what the fleet is actually generating, though Pony.ai's own public disclosures do not confirm that specific threshold figure.

At home, Pony.ai closed out that same week with 961 robotaxis on the road, including 667 Gen-7 vehicles, and said it expected to exceed its 1,000-vehicle target for 2025. The company has set a goal of more than 3,000 robotaxis in China by the end of 2026, meaning the new European commitment of over 2,000 vehicles would come close to matching the size of Pony.ai's entire domestic fleet target within roughly a year. Pony.ai reported robotaxi revenue up 89.5% year-over-year in the same release, with fare-paying revenue more than tripling.

The European deal is part of a broader shift in Uber's autonomous vehicle strategy. The company has struck roughly 20 partnerships with AV developers spanning robotaxis, freight and delivery, including deals with Waymo, WeRide, Baidu, Momenta and Avride, and has said it expects to offer robotaxi service in more than 10 countries by late 2026. A 2,000-vehicle European fleet would already approach the scale of Waymo's entire US robotaxi operation, which stood at roughly 2,500 vehicles across five cities as of November 2025.

Pony.ai's Gulf ambitions place it alongside several Chinese rivals racing to establish paid service there ahead of any European or US competitor. WeRide (NASDAQ: WRD) has run a fully driverless service on Abu Dhabi's Yas Island since November 2025 with more than 200 vehicles and a goal of 1,000 by the end of 2026, while Baidu's (NASDAQ: BIDU) Apollo Go launched its first fleet outside China in Dubai in March 2025, targeting 100 fully autonomous robotaxis by the end of 2026. Pony.ai has been testing on Yas Island since 2023 and has a separate agreement with Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority for supervised trials, with a goal of fully driverless Gulf operations by the end of 2026. Neither Waymo nor General Motors' Cruise, the two best-known US robotaxi operators, has entered the Gulf market, leaving Chinese firms an early opening there.

Pony.ai is due to report second-quarter earnings on August 18, 2026, four days after the Uber announcement. The more than 2,000-vehicle European commitment will test whether the cost and unit-economics gains the company has reported in China can hold up in markets where labor, insurance and regulatory costs all look different.

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