Yandex purchases Uber’s stake in delivery and self-driving businesses

Yandex is one of Russia's biggest technology companies

Russian search engine and ridehailing company Yandex has announced that it will buy out Uber in some of the joint ventures the two giants share, including its food and grocery delivery services, in a $1 billion deal.    

The agreement will see Yandex purchase Uber’s 33.5 per cent stake in Yandex.Eats, Yandex.Lavka and Yandex.Delivery, giving Yandex 100 per cent ownership in all three businesses, as well as Uber’s 18.2 per cent interest in Yandex Self-Driving Group (SDG), giving Yandex 100% ownership in the business.

In addition, it will gain a further 4.5 per cent interest in the newly restructured MLU, which will focus on mobility businesses, giving Yandex and its employees a total of approximately 71 per cent ownership in the joint venture.

Yandex will also get an extension of the current license for the exclusive right to use the Uber brand in Russia and certain other countries until August 2030.

“Since we started our partnership with Uber in 2018, we’ve been able to create and rapidly develop a number of successful businesses – all of them are highly synergetic to our e-commerce initiative and to the entire Yandex ecosystem,” said Tigran Khudaverdyan, Deputy CEO of Yandex.

“The consolidation of these businesses puts us in a great position to further increase strategic management flexibility, while creating new substantial growth potential for our businesses and cross-platform consumer benefits over the years to come, allowing us to unlock new sources of value for our shareholders.”

The move follows a pattern that Uber has set over the past 12 months, in which the technology firm has sold off parts of its driverless car and flying taxi services as it looks to become profitable.