Two U.S. college campuses are shedding their food-delivery robots for now due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Grubhub stated Thursday that it’s ending its partnership with Russian tech firm Yandex and pulling 100 Yandex-made food-delivery robots from the campuses of Ohio State College in Columbus, Ohio, and the College of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. Chicago-based Grubhub stated it’s working with each campuses to seek out alternate options.
Grubhub had been utilizing the robots to ship meals on campus at Ohio State since August. The corporate launched robotic supply on the College of Arizona final November. The corporate says it was doing 1,000 deliveries a day between the 2 campuses.
Yandex is Russia’s largest web search and ride-hailing firm. Toby Snuggs, head of gross sales for the Yandex Self-Driving Group, confirmed the break up with Grubhub and stated the robots will likely be despatched to different places exterior the U.S. the place Yandex has operations.
“It’s a actual disgrace that we will’t proceed with this nice undertaking we launched into within the U.S. campus house with Grubhub as everyone knows it was having a extremely optimistic impression to the scholar physique,” Snuggs stated.
Earlier this week, ride-hailing large Uber stated it was attempting to hurry up a deliberate divestment of its shares in Yandex.Taxi, Yandex’s mobility enterprise. Uber holds a 29% stake in Yandex.Taxi, value about $800 million. Uber stated three of its executives who had been on Yandex.Taxi’s board have additionally resigned.
In a regulatory submitting Thursday, Yandex famous that the Moscow-based firm and its executives haven’t been focused with particular sanctions as a result of Yandex doesn’t function within the protection, aerospace or maritime sectors.
The Nasdaq inventory alternate suspended buying and selling of Yandex shares final week.
