Driverless Steppes: NVIDIA and Pony.ai Prepare Robotaxi Launch in Kazakhstan

The deployment of Physical AI is shifting to jurisdictions with favorable regulations. On October 23, 2026, Pony.ai, the ride-hailing service inDrive, and NVIDIA Corporation announced a strategic agreement: the companies are exploring the launch of a commercial robotaxi service in Kazakhstan (targeting Astana). The vehicles will be based on Pony.ai's Gen-7 autonomous system and NVIDIA's Hyperion hardware infrastructure.

This infrastructure maneuver demonstrates how tech giants bypass bureaucratic barriers and union protests in the US and EU. Emerging markets offer Big Tech ideal "sandboxes" for testing unmanned transport in real urban environments on a national scale. If the project receives a green light from the Kazakhstani government, it will set a precedent for the rapid commercialization of AI in logistics, opening up the vast and unregulated Central Asian market to NVIDIA and Asian developers.

Source: Pony.ai / Dow Jones Newswires / inDrive