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

1 year 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

Microsoft Plans $10 Billion-Plus Gulf Expansion Despite Iran Conflict

Security is shaping Microsoft’s approach, from resilience work with governments to what it will say about how the money splits by country.

Published

4 days ago

September 24, 2026

Nour Nasir

Microsoft

Microsoft is planning more than $10 billion of investment across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait through 2030, Vice Chair and President Brad Smith told Reuters, calling the spending schedule aggressive. The Iranian conflict that began on February 28 has not persuaded the company to scale back.

“We’re sustaining all the investments we planned to make before this conflict started, and we are in fact adding to them,” Smith said. The $10 billion-plus total does not, however, show how large those additions are.

The investment, which Smith described as part of Microsoft’s continued infrastructure expansion, is aimed at cloud and AI infrastructure and at the company’s growing regional operations. Microsoft also intends to put more than $400 million into subsea and terrestrial connectivity across the Middle East by 2030.

The spending fits the region’s own ambitions too. Gulf governments have been investing heavily in AI infrastructure as part of a push to diversify their economies beyond oil and gas and turn themselves into global technology hubs. Major cloud and AI providers have been drawn in part by the land and relatively low-cost energy on offer.

Microsoft is widening its partnerships with regional AI companies, though not on identical terms. In 2024, it invested $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi-based G42 for a minority stake, and Smith currently sits on G42’s board. Saudi Arabia’s Humain and Qatar’s Qai are working with Microsoft on selected priority areas, but Smith said the company does not plan to make capital investments in either.

Also Read: Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power

The conflict has added another strand to Microsoft’s work in the region. Since it began, Smith said, the company has supported regional partners with digital resilience assessments, and it is now working with Gulf countries through a digital resilience initiative focused on preparedness and the protection of critical data.

So far, the company has given no country-by-country breakdown of the investment, citing security among other factors. So while the headline figure is public, how Microsoft divides the spending among the four countries is not.