2026-08-05
Mubadala Investment Company, one of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign investors, has led a $250 million Series C round in Moove, the UAE-headquartered mobility company that has grown into Uber’s largest vehicle supply partner and a leading operator of autonomous vehicle fleets. The round, announced on 5 August 2026, values Moove at $2.1 billion. It was co-led by Woven Capital, Toyota’s growth fund, and Ion Pacific, with participation from BlackRock, Uber, Franklin Templeton, MUFG and BlueCrest Capital Management, among other institutional backers. Moove says the new capital will fund launches in new markets, an expansion of its workforce to more than three times its current size, and a decisive push into autonomous mobility, including a robotics-first depot network it calls Nests. For the UAE, the deal is another marker of how quickly the Emirates is becoming the home base for global technology companies, and of how actively its sovereign capital is backing them.
The deal: sovereign capital meets autonomous mobility
The $250 million Series C brings Moove’s total funding to $694 million raised across 17 rounds, according to The National. The composition of the investor list is as telling as the amount. Mubadala brings Abu Dhabi’s sovereign balance sheet and its long-standing mandate to build strategic industries in the UAE. Woven Capital connects Moove to Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker and a major investor in automated driving. Uber, whose platform generates demand for tens of thousands of Moove vehicles, deepened its position alongside asset managers BlackRock and Franklin Templeton and Japanese banking group MUFG.
That mix, a sovereign fund, a global automaker, a demand platform and institutional asset managers, is the capital structure of a company being positioned as infrastructure rather than as a consumer app. Moove’s co-founder and co-chief executive Ladi Delano framed the round in exactly those terms: as autonomy scales, he said, infrastructure ownership and operations will define the category leaders.
From Lagos to a UAE headquarters: what Moove is
Moove was founded in Nigeria in 2020 by Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi with a simple model: financing vehicles for ride-hailing drivers who could not access traditional credit, with repayments deducted from their earnings on platforms such as Uber. The company scaled across Sub-Saharan Africa, entered Europe in 2022 with a fully electric rent-to-buy fleet in London, and expanded into Latin America and Asia through acquisitions including Kovi in Brazil and Tokyo Taxi in Japan.
Today the company operates roughly 42,000 vehicles across 29 cities in 13 countries, employs about 3,300 people and generates around $420 million in annual recurring revenue. Somewhere along that journey the centre of gravity shifted: Moove is now headquartered in the UAE, running a global fleet business from the Emirates. It is a trajectory the UAE has been engineering for years, and Moove is far from alone in choosing Dubai and Abu Dhabi as a global base; fitness-tech unicorn Whoop made a similar move when it opened its UAE office to anchor growth across the region.
The autonomous bet: Waymo, Nests and fleets in Dubai and Abu Dhabi
The most consequential part of the announcement is where the money goes. Moove has become the leading third-party operator of autonomous vehicle fleets for Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving unit, with live operations in Phoenix and Miami and an expansion to London in the pipeline. The National reports that Moove already runs self-driving vehicle fleets in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, placing the company at the centre of the UAE’s own autonomous transport push.
The Series C will fund the growth of that autonomous business on two fronts. First, fleet ownership: buying and operating the vehicles themselves as autonomy scales. Second, the Nests, a network of robotics-first depots where autonomous fleets are charged, serviced, maintained and orchestrated for continuous operation. Moove plans to grow the autonomous division’s headcount from about 150 people to roughly 500 by the end of 2026, part of the broader plan to more than triple the company’s total workforce.
The logic is straightforward. Self-driving technology companies such as Waymo build the software and sensors; someone still has to own, finance, charge, clean and repair tens of thousands of physical vehicles, around the clock, in every city where robotaxis operate. Moove is bidding to be that operational layer globally, and the UAE, where Dubai has set a target for 25% of all transport journeys to be autonomous by 2030, is a natural headquarters for the attempt.
Why Mubadala’s lead matters
Mubadala leading the round fits a wider pattern of UAE sovereign capital backing the technologies the country wants on its own streets. Abu Dhabi and Dubai have moved faster than most cities in licensing autonomous vehicle trials, and the emirates are already testing robotaxi services with several operators. A Mubadala-anchored Moove gives the UAE a home-grown champion in the operational side of that industry, one that exports its model to the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America rather than importing someone else’s.
For founders and investors watching from outside, the signal is that growth-stage capital in the Emirates is real and active. Sovereign investors, family offices and international funds with Gulf offices are writing large cheques into companies that base themselves in the UAE, and the government machinery, from licensing to visas, is built to absorb the resulting expansion.
What the Moove round signals for founders
Beyond the headline numbers, the deal carries practical lessons for anyone building or relocating a business in the Emirates:
- The UAE headquarters model is proven. A company founded in Lagos now runs 42,000 vehicles in 13 countries from the Emirates, with sovereign backing. Global operating businesses, not only holding structures, are choosing UAE incorporation.
- Sovereign capital follows strategic sectors. Mobility, AI, logistics, fintech and advanced manufacturing sit squarely in the mandates of Mubadala and its peers. Companies in these sectors gain more than money by being local: they gain a strategic shareholder aligned with national plans.
- Autonomy is creating an infrastructure economy. Depots, charging, fleet maintenance and orchestration software are all real businesses being funded now, and the UAE is one of the few markets with live robotaxi operations to sell into.
- Hiring at scale is part of the package. Tripling a workforce means visas, payroll and employment compliance across jurisdictions, and the UAE side of that expansion runs through free zone and mainland structures that need to be set up correctly from day one.
- Banking readiness matters at every stage. A company moving $250 million of fresh capital needs institutional-grade accounts; a founder arriving with a seed round needs a working operating account no less urgently.
How Atlant Capital can help
Moove’s round is a large-scale version of a decision hundreds of founders make every month: base the company in the UAE and scale globally from here. Atlant Capital handles the practical layer of that decision. We advise on company setup in UAE free zones and on the mainland, structuring the entity to match your activity, investors and future funding rounds. We support corporate bank account opening with UAE banks accustomed to venture-backed and international businesses, and we arrange residence visas for founders and the teams they relocate as they grow.
Conclusion
A $2.1 billion valuation, a $250 million round led by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign capital and a mandate to build the physical infrastructure of autonomous transport: Moove’s Series C is one of the clearest statements yet about where the UAE wants to sit in the next decade of mobility. The company that began by financing cars for Lagos ride-hailing drivers is now a UAE-headquartered operator of driverless fleets on three continents, expanding its staff threefold and building robotic depots for a world of self-driving vehicles. For businesses weighing the Emirates as a base, the message from this deal is simple: the capital, the regulation and the ambition are already here.
