Your Next Uber Could Be A Rivian With No Driver

Uber will invest up to $1.25 in Rivian. The investment is part of a partnership between the two brands: Rivian will help Uber deploy up to 50,000 robotaxis across a handful of countries through 2031. Uber's commitment to Rivian includes plans for the company and its fleet partners to buy 10,000 autonomous versions of the upcoming Rivian R2. The option to buy another 40,000 more robotaxis starting in 2030 was also included in the terms.

At first, Uber will invest $300 million in Rivian. From there, Rivian has targets to hit before it can expect more money from Uber, handled in four stages. As for the actual deployment of autonomous taxis, the two companies will start in the US. The first cities planned are San Francisco, already a hotbed for autonomous taxis, and Miami. That will happen, ideally, in 2028. Further expansion will include 25 cities across the US, Canada, and into Europe.

“We’re big believers in Rivian’s approach—designing the vehicle, compute platform, and software stack together, while maintaining end-to-end control of scaled manufacturing and supply in the U.S. That vertical integration, combined with data from their growing consumer vehicle base and experience managing the complexities of commercial fleets, gives us conviction to set these ambitious but achievable targets,” said Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshani in a press release.

The move is part of a broader investment in autonomous features at Rivian. "The scale of Rivian’s growing data flywheel coupled with RAP1 [Rivian Autonomy Processor], our state-of-the-art in-house inference platform, and our multi-modal perception platform make us incredibly excited for the rapid advancement of Rivian autonomy over the next couple of years," said Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe.

Rivian and Uber join a growing robotaxi market, driven in large part by Waymo, which already operates in several cities across the US and has several planned expansions over the next few years. The segment isn't a cakewalk, though. Service providers like Tesla, Waymo, and others have all hit hurdles, including serious ones like accidents and protests from residents in cities like San Francisco. Notably, San Franciscans planted traffic cones on the sensor units of Waymo taxis in protest, which flummoxed the car's self-driving systems. Whether Uber and Rivian will face similar backlash, or that of a regulatory nature, will have to wait until deployments begin in 2028.