Pony AI Takes Its Robotaxi Bet to Kazakhstan With inDrive and Nvidia

Pony AI is heading into Central Asia for the first time, and it’s bringing partners rather than going it alone. The Chinese autonomous driving firm has signed a memorandum of understanding with California-based ride-hailing platform inDrive and chip giant Nvidia to trial robotaxi service in Kazakhstan, starting in the capital, Astana.

The division of labor is fairly clean. Pony AI supplies the seventh-generation robotaxis and the Level 4 self-driving stack, inDrive runs the platform and day-to-day service, and Nvidia chips in with AI infrastructure through its Hyperion autonomous driving computing platform and Halos safety system.

Before any passengers climb in, the three will work through the technical, operational, regulatory and commercial questions that come with running driverless ride-hailing on Kazakh roads via the inDrive app. The Astana pilot itself is contingent on an agreement with the Kazakh government, after which the partners would weigh expansion to other Kazakh cities and other markets where inDrive already operates.

Why Astana, of All Places

Kazakhstan is Central Asia’s largest economy, and it has moved unusually early on the legal side of driverless mobility. A presidential decree signed in June pushed digitalization and artificial intelligence up the national agenda, and Pony AI points to that regulatory groundwork as a main reason the country got the nod as the first pilot market.

Then there’s the weather. Astana, home to roughly 1.7 million people, is one of the fastest-growing capitals in the region — and the second-coldest capital on the planet, with winters that drag on and leave roads under snow and ice for long stretches. For a company selling the reliability of its autonomous stack, that’s a genuinely useful stress test.

“Launching operations there will provide an important test of autonomous driving technology in extreme winter conditions,” said inDrive founder and CEO Arsen Tomsky.

The Partner That Already Has the Users

inDrive isn’t a household name in every market, but its footprint is hard to ignore: ride-hailing and delivery services in more than 1,200 cities across 47 countries, with over 400 million app downloads to date.

For Pony AI, leaning on an established local platform is a familiar playbook. The company has been expanding overseas by pairing its technology with ride-hailing operators rather than building consumer-facing brands from scratch. In August it widened its existing tie-up with Uber, with plans for more than 2,000 robotaxis across five European cities.

• Gen-7 fleet: already running fully driverless commercial service in several Chinese cities
• Overseas reach: deployments in Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia
• Fleet size: 1,975 robotaxis as of June 30
• 2026 target: more than 3,500 vehicles by year-end

“Kazakhstan represents an exciting opportunity to bring autonomous mobility to a new market in Central Asia,” Pony AI founder and CEO James Peng said in the announcement.

A Crowded Race Abroad

Pony AI isn’t moving into Central Asia alone. Rivals are pushing out of China at the same clip. WeRide struck a deal with Denmark’s GreenMobility in August, targeting autonomous vehicle deployment there in 2027, while Momenta became the first Asian company to secure a robotaxi testing permit in Germany in late July.

The Kazakhstan pilot, then, is less about one country and more about positioning. Central Asia’s regulatory environment is still being written, and whoever helps shape it early tends to get a long runway. Whether Astana’s ice and snow cooperate is another question entirely — and one that won’t be answered until the first cars actually roll out.