In Madrid, a passenger opens the Uber app, taps a button, and a driverless car from a company most Spaniards have never heard of pulls up.
The company is WeRide (文远知行), and the bet is blunt: China's autonomous-driving leaders may find their first real profits not on familiar home streets, but in cities that welcome them faster.
Uber is the matchmaker. In May 2025 the two announced a plan to put robotaxis in 15 new international cities within five years. Madrid is the latest, and the twelfth city overall for WeRide's service.
A company built for the long road
WeRide (文远知行) was founded in 2017 by CEO Han Xu (韩旭), a former Baidu researcher, and has become one of the most internationally visible Chinese autonomous-driving firms. It listed on the Nasdaq on October 25, 2024 under the ticker WRD, branding itself the world's first publicly traded robotaxi company.
In 2025 it added a Hong Kong listing (HKEX: 0800) as a second primary board, and in June 2026 it was included in Stock Connect (港股通), the scheme that lets mainland Chinese investors trade selected Hong Kong shares. The result is a rare dual Nasdaq-plus-Hong Kong capital base funding a global rollout.
Where the cars actually drive
The company states it operates or is launching in more than 30 cities across over a dozen countries. The list is genuinely global:
- China: Guangzhou and Beijing, where it runs fully driverless commercial service, including 24-hour airport and train-station runs.
- Middle East: Abu Dhabi and Dubai, where it operates fully driverless robotaxis with Uber; Riyadh is next.
- Asia: Singapore, with passenger service, plus Japan (Nagoya, Gifu).
- Europe: Zurich, Switzerland; Leuven, Belgium; and now Madrid, Spain.
- Coming up: Copenhagen, Geneva, Rotterdam-area cities, and more.
Regulatory approvals are the real moat. WeRide says its products hold autonomous-driving permits in China, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, France, Saudi Arabia, and Belgium, among others — a set that lets it commercialize where rivals are still testing.
The fleet and the five-year plan
As of mid-2026, WeRide reported a total autonomous fleet of nearly 2,800 vehicles, of which roughly 1,300 are robotaxis. The ambition is far larger:
- ~2,600 robotaxis deployed globally by the end of 2026.
- More than 20,000 autonomous vehicles across its product lines over the next five years.
- Tens of thousands of robotaxis by 2030.
Those are company targets, not guarantees, and they depend on local partners absorbing the operating risk.
The Uber and Grab ecosystem
WeRide's clever trick is a light-asset model: it supplies the technology and the vehicle platform, while local operators handle fleets, permits, and riders. In Madrid it works with Uber and AVOMO, a fleet operator already partnered with Uber in the United States.
The partner roster is unusually deep for an autonomous-driving startup: Uber, Nvidia, Bosch, Grab, and Renault-Nissan. WeRide says it is the only autonomous-driving company to have secured investment commitments from both Uber and Grab, two of the world's largest ride-hailing platforms. The Uber relationship alone is the anchor — the two already run what WeRide describes as the largest commercial robotaxi fleet outside China and the United States, in the Middle East.
Beyond robotaxis: the quiet ADAS business
Robotaxis grab headlines, but WeRide's steadier near-term money may come from selling driver-assistance tech to carmakers. Through a partnership with Bosch, its one-stage end-to-end assisted-driving solution reached mass-production readiness in 2025. Its WRD 3.0 platform has won five consecutive domestic assisted-driving competitions and secured nearly 30 mass-production design wins with automakers including GAC and Chery.
That creates two growth curves: a slower, capital-hungry robotaxi business, and a faster, royalty-like supply of assisted-driving software to factories.
The financial picture
WeRide is still small relative to its ambition. In the first quarter of 2026 it reported revenue of about RMB 114 million (≈ US$15.8M / HK$124M), up 58% year on year — healthy growth, but a reminder that scale has not yet arrived. Profitability remains a function of how fast cities open and how cheaply fleets can run without safety drivers.
What readers can do now
- Track the 15-city Uber pipeline. Madrid is one; the remaining cities named in the May 2025 agreement are the real test of whether "global first" is strategy or slogan.
- Separate the two businesses. When reading WeRide's numbers, distinguish robotaxi operating losses from the higher-margin ADAS supply deals with Bosch, GAC, and Chery.
- Watch permits, not demos. A new city announcement means little until local regulatory approval lands; follow the license count as the leading indicator.
Honest limitations
This article relies on WeRide's own investor relations disclosures and a Chinese official-media report on its 2026 expansion; both are company-favorable sources. We did not independently verify fleet counts, the precise number of regulatory permits (figures have ranged from seven to eight countries across releases), or the 2026 quarterly revenue beyond the company's stated RMB 114 million. Dimensions not covered include per-city unit economics, the true cost of safety drivers during transition, and how WeRide's technology compares head-to-head with Waymo or Baidu Apollo in independent testing.