Astana tests, a safety operator first

The visible time on this TechCrunch page is 9:00 PM PDT on October 22, 2026. inDrive, the Chinese autonomous-driving company Pony.ai, and Nvidia said Friday that they had signed a memorandum of understanding to explore bringing Pony.ai's robotaxis onto inDrive's platform. Testing will begin in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, in the first half of 2027. inDrive chief technology officer Yuri Misnik gave TechCrunch that timing. The tests will initially involve a safety operator. Fully driverless rides are the eventual goal. The memorandum, the half year, the safety operator, and the goal should not be collapsed into a service that is already open.

The split of work is also a plan. Under the proposed arrangement, Pony.ai would provide its Gen-7 robotaxis, and inDrive would offer them through its ride-hailing app and operate them in Kazakhstan. Nvidia would supply the artificial-intelligence technology, including the Hyperion platform and the Halos safety system. This is not the same arrangement as the six European companies on another page. The at least 25,000 L4 Lucid cars on that page are not here. Nvidia also says Hyperion could lower the cost of developing robotaxis by offering a ready foundation of sensors and computing. Could lower is a claim, not a bill already saved. Vice president Ali Kani says those savings matter especially in emerging markets where ride-hailing is already relatively affordable. That comparison is his. It is not an Astana fare.

Pony.ai's global figures stay separate. The company aims to have more than 3,500 robotaxis operating in more than 20 cities worldwide by the end of 2026, up from a fleet of 1,975 vehicles at the end of June. Those two counts are Pony.ai's own global figures, not the number of vehicles in the Astana test. Last month Kazakhstan announced plans to launch autonomous taxi services in 2027, with initial trials in Astana and two other cities, and it has introduced rules for testing autonomous vehicles on certain public roads. That is a national plan sitting beside this memorandum. It is not the same approval.

Astana has a population of around 1.7 million and months of snow and ice. Founder and chief executive Arsen Tomsky says launching there is a chance to evaluate autonomous driving in harsh winter conditions. That is a reason for the test, not a winter mileage already completed. Another item on the same page is a different agreement. In December, inDrive signed a separate deal with Saudi Arabia's AI Driver to explore vehicles from the Chinese firm WeRide, starting with Riyadh. The target then was a pilot in the first half of 2026, and the page says it remains unclear whether testing has begun. inDrive operates in more than 1,200 cities across 47 countries. That city count is not a count of cities where robotaxis are already open. The announcement coincides with Jensen Huang's first visit to Kazakhstan on Friday. The page does not turn the visit into a signing ceremony.