Dubai taps U.S. startups to go over, under, and around its traffic

Dubai has signed multi-million-dollar agreements with three U.S. transport companies to pilot experimental electric and autonomous systems, positioning the city as a live testing ground for technologies still struggling for commercial scale elsewhere. The largest deal, worth $545 million, was awarded to Elon Musk’s The Boring Company for an initial 6.4-kilometre underground Loop connecting the Dubai International Financial Centre to the Dubai Mall; two smaller agreements went to Glydways, a San Francisco startup building driverless pod tracks, and Joby Aviation, the California eVTOL developer backed by almost $900 million from Toyota.

“In a city scaling as rapidly as Dubai, there is a logic to exploring multiple solutions in parallel rather than relying on linear sequencing,” said Martin Tillman, founder of Dubai-based TMP Consult. “The risk is reputational exposure if expectations run ahead of demonstrated performance.”

The Boring Company’s Dubai Loop is proposed to operate in a four-station pilot phase that RTA director-general Mattar Al Tayer has said could serve about 13,000 passengers daily. The company’s only operational system, the Vegas Loop beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center, has carried about 3 million passengers since 2021 but currently uses human-driven Teslas at 30–40 miles per hour rather than the high-speed autonomous vehicles initially promised. Critics, including Marcus Enoch of Loughborough University, have warned the Loop can function as a premium service without meaningfully reducing congestion.

Project details and technical gaps

• The Boring Company: 6.4 km first phase, four stations, $545 million Dubai deal; current operational reference is the Vegas Loop.
• Glydways: Small air-conditioned pods carrying four to six passengers on narrow dedicated tracks. Planned first trial route is 2.8 km from the National Paints Metro Station to Bluewaters Island; Glydways says its system can move 10,000 passengers an hour in each direction at “90% less than the cost of conventional transport.” The company has a test track in Concord, California, and has broken ground on a pilot near Atlanta.
• Joby Aviation: Completed more than 850 test flights last year across the U.S., the UAE, and Japan. In November, Joby completed a piloted 17-minute point-to-point air taxi flight in the UAE to Al Maktoum International Airport and is building vertiports at four Dubai locations with Skyports. Joby has not yet received type certification from U.S. regulators.

Glydways’ managing director in the region, Amair Saleem, said: “2026 marks an exciting period where its systems start to be deployed across various projects around the world, including Dubai.” The company says its pods are engineered to operate in temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius, an explicit response to concerns an anonymous regional transport expert raised about the energy cost of cooling repeatedly opening pod doors in Gulf heat.

Joby’s president, Didier Papadopoulos, has suggested regulatory divergence could accelerate local service: it was “possible, depending on where things go” that Joby’s aircraft could carry passengers in the UAE before the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s approval, according to disclosures cited in reporting on the deal.

Dubai’s previous high-profile transport gambles have faltered: a 2016 Hyperloop One partnership collapsed after the company shut down in 2023 despite raising $450 million, and a 2021 exclusivity deal with General Motors’ Cruise to deploy 4,000 robotaxis ended without a single passenger after Cruise’s U.S. operations faced safety incidents and GM wrote off $3.48 billion in 2023. Rest of World’s queries to the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority about the current deals went unanswered.

Observers say the tests must be measured against practical benchmarks. Tillman suggests pilots should answer core questions: How many people are actually riding? Is it safe? Does it cost less to run than it earns? And does it connect to the buses, metro, and sidewalks people already use? Until Dubai publishes clear success criteria and timelines, the projects will remain as much about experimentation and marketing as about demonstrable mobility outcomes.