News

Uber And WeRide Roll Out Driverless Robotaxis In Abu Dhabi

Yas Island becomes the first site where Uber offers fully autonomous rides outside the US, backed by Abu Dhabi’s city-level permit.

Published

7 months ago

November 26, 2025

Nour Nasir

uber and weride roll out driverless robotaxis in abu dhabi

Uber and WeRide have switched on fully driverless robotaxi services in Abu Dhabi, marking the first commercial rollout of Level 4 autonomous vehicles in the Middle East and the first market outside the US to host them on Uber’s platform.

The launch rests on a city-level permit issued by Abu Dhabi’s Integrated Transport Centre (ITC) and supported by local fleet operator Tawasul — a regulatory green light both companies say is rare outside the US. It follows a federal permit WeRide secured in late 2025, which authorized fully driverless commercial operations across the UAE subject to emirate approval.

Operations begin on Yas Island with no driving specialist required inside the vehicle. Expansion is slated across the capital through 2025, including districts already covered by earlier supervised pilots. Riders can request WeRide cars through Uber Comfort, UberX, or a new “Autonomous” category — Uber’s first dedicated self-driving option anywhere. “This milestone represents a major step toward the large-scale deployment of self-driving mobility solutions in the UAE,” the companies said in a recent press release.

The firms point to utilization gains, new licensing, and a maturing regulatory framework as signs that the service can reach breakeven. Their joint robotaxi partnership launched in 2024 and grew again in 2025 to cover about half of Abu Dhabi’s core areas, including Al Reem and Al Maryah. More coverage is planned for the city center by year-end.

Also Read: Aramco Installs Middle East’s First Industrial Quantum Computer

WeRide has operated in Abu Dhabi since 2021 and holds a national license authorizing autonomous testing and operations across public roads. The company now runs more than 100 robotaxis in the region, giving it a four-year head start in local deployment. Uber and WeRide both frame Abu Dhabi as a base for expanding to thousands of robotaxis across the Middle East.

The move strengthens the UAE’s push to embed autonomous mobility within its broader digitalization agenda and positions Abu Dhabi as a live test bed for commercial driverless transport.

News

Instagram Now Lets You Tune Its Algorithm, But There’s One Big Catch

The new controls promise users “agency” over their feed, but asking to see more from accounts you actually follow returns an error.

Published

3 days ago

June 11, 2026

Nour Nasir

Instagram

Instagram has expanded its algorithm personalization feature to the main feed, letting users specify which topics they want surfaced more or less often in recommendations.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri framed the change as a matter of user control. “I believe it’s in our best interest as a business to empower people to shape Instagram into something that works for them, and that people should be able to have a meaningful amount of agency over the products they spend so much time in,” he wrote on Threads.

Though it turns out that agency has limits. The controls only accept interest-based topics, such as “rescue dogs” or “parenting humor”. Requesting “posts from people I follow” returns no results, which is obviously a sore point for creators whose posts rarely reach their own audiences. Mosseri conceded the tension: “Who you follow used to be a meaningful tool people had for shaping their own experience, and as recommendations took over the main feed that tool quietly stopped working”.

Also Read: How To Find & Cancel Pending Instagram Requests

Instagram credits large language models for making its algorithms legible enough to personalize, and says it is “actively working on supporting requests for people, different moods or vibes, content types, and more” – potentially leading to a fully “bespoke” version of the app.