News

Uber To Add Blade Air Taxi Bookings Through Its App

Joby Aviation will integrate Blade’s air mobility service into the Uber app from 2026, linking airports and cities with quiet, zero-emission electric aircraft.

Published

4 months ago

September 11, 2025

Nour Nasir

uber to add blade taxi bookings through its app

Electric air taxi firm Joby Aviation and Uber will begin integrating Blade’s urban air mobility services into the Uber app as early as 2026, following Joby’s acquisition of Blade’s passenger business this summer.

Blade carried more than 50,000 passengers in 2024 across New York and Southern Europe, linking high-demand routes such as Newark, JFK, Manhattan and the Hamptons. Once folded into Uber, Blade flights will be bookable alongside ground rides, giving users faster, seamless connections in congested cities.

Joby and Uber have been partners in advanced air mobility since 2019, with Joby acquiring Uber’s Elevate division in 2021. That deal gave Joby tools for market modelling and multimodal integration. The Blade acquisition extends that partnership by adding a ready-made network of landing sites and passenger lounges.

Joby’s electric aircraft, designed to carry four passengers and a pilot at speeds up to 200 mph, promises an acoustic footprint far quieter than helicopters and aims to launch in cities including Dubai, New York, Los Angeles, the UK and Japan.

JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby pitched the integration as both a practical step and a long-term signal: “We’re excited to introduce Uber customers to the magic of seamless urban air travel. Integrating Blade into the Uber app is the natural next step in our global partnership with Uber and will lay the foundation for the introduction of our quiet, zero-emissions aircraft in the years ahead. Together with Uber’s global platform and Blade’s proven network, we’re setting the stage for a new era of air travel worldwide”.

Also Read: KAUST Mathematical Model Tackles 5G Interference With Aircraft

Andrew Macdonald, president and COO of Uber, added: “By harnessing the scale of the Uber platform and partnering with Joby, the industry leader in advanced air mobility, we’re excited to bring our customers the next generation of travel”.

For Uber, adding air mobility is less about novelty than keeping users inside its platform for every leg of a journey.

News

EDT&Partners Buys eFlow To Bolster AI Learning Push

The Middle East-founded platform is adding engagement tech as the consultancy firm widens into regulated workforce training.

Published

2 days ago

January 13, 2026

Joanna Melki

edt&partners buys eflow to bolster ai learning push

EDT&Partners has bought eFlow, an AI conversational learning platform founded in the Middle East, for an undisclosed sum. The deal marks a push by the consultancy business to tighten control over last-mile learning across education and workplace training.

EDT&Partners, long rooted in universities and public-sector work, is targeting a broader “knowledge economy” in which learning is continuous and embeds into daily workflows. Clients in regulated industries are pressing for digital learning that is both responsible and actually completed — not just designed.

“Education remains at the core of who we are,” said Pablo Langa, founder and managing partner at EDT&Partners. “At the same time, we are intentionally expanding into the broader learning ecosystem, particularly in highly regulated industries”.

eFlow delivers courses through chat-style interactions, using AI prompts to keep students and employees on task. The premise is blunt: engagement is the bottleneck in digital learning, and completion rates lag unless the platform actively supports the learner.

The acquisition folds eFlow’s engagement layer into EDT&Partners’ strategic and technology work, including Lecture, the firm’s open-source GenAI framework. The pitch is that institutions and employers can launch programs that people actually finish.

Co-founder Bassel Jalaleddine said the deal gives eFlow “the strategic and operational backbone needed to scale responsibly,” and stressed the platform’s intent to support educators rather than replace them.

Also Read: OpenAI’s ChatGPT Health Is A Private Space For Health Data

The move also strengthens EDT&Partners’ footing in the Middle East. The region is pushing workforce reform and talent development, and low-bandwidth, messaging-based learning travels well across emerging markets and community training programs.

eFlow’s co-founders, Jalaleddine and Samer Bawab, will join EDT&Partners as senior leaders. Both brands will run in parallel for now while teams and platforms are aligned ahead of industry events next year, including Bett 2026 in London.

The deal underlines demand for tools that move beyond content libraries toward engagement and completion — a direction echoed in corporate training budgets and government skills agendas.