• Food delivery service Grubhub has ended its partnership with Yandex Self-Driving Group, the autonomous vehicle unit of Russian tech company Yandex, citing economic sanctions the US and other countries have imposed on Russia following conflicts with Ukraine. With this, Yandex’s plans to roll out its droids across Grubhub partnering campuses across the US come to a halt.

<ul><li>Yandex first partnered with Grubhub in July 2021 aiming to launch droid-based food delivery services across 250 Grubhub serving campuses. The units are currently operational at Ohio State University (OSU; launched in August) and the University of Arizona (launched in November).</ul>

• Grubhub also revealed that it is currently working with its partnering universities to assess alternative options to Yandex.

• Yandex Self-Driving Group manufactures a six-wheeled delivery droid dubbed “Rover,” which uses sidewalks to travel. It can carry a payload of up to 44 lbs, travel at a maximum speed of 5 mph, and navigate a range of bad weather conditions.

<ul><li> Analyst QuickTake: Today’s news puts an end to the largest partnership a last-mile delivery automation company within our coverage had to bring droid-based deliveries to universities. Peer startups including Starship Technologies (serves 20+ campuses) and Kiwibot (serves 10 campuses) have also tapped the university clientele but on a much smaller scale. In addition, Kiwibot also has a similar partnership with Sodexo, a food service and facilities management company, to deploy its droids at 50 US campuses this year; but Starship Technologies does not have such large-scale commitments in the pipeline. These peer startups might be on the radar for Grubhub, who is said to be looking for similar partners.</ul>