Rivian has expanded its software joint venture with Volkswagen Group to license elements of its AI voice assistant, widening a partnership that Volkswagen’s own managers have been reported to be rethinking.
Volkswagen’s finance chief said hours earlier, at the company’s third-quarter earnings call, that the group’s basic software split “hasn’t changed.”
“We also expanded our Volkswagen joint venture, licensing elements of our AI Voice Assistant technology as part of the broader electrical architecture and software partnership,” Rivian said in its third-quarter earnings deck on Thursday. It called the deal “a proof point for the extensibility of the platform we’ve built in-house.”
The license is part of the broader electrical architecture and software partnership, the company said, rather than a separate agreement. Rivian did not give financial terms, say which elements of the assistant are covered, or say which Volkswagen brands or models would use the technology.
A Week of Questions
The disclosure follows a week of doubts over the partnership. Volkswagen’s brand chief wants to build about three-quarters of the next generation of Volkswagen, Skoda and Cupra models on software the group developed in China instead of Rivian’s technology, manager magazin reported on Monday.
Wassym Bensaid, Rivian’s Chief Software Officer and co-CEO of the joint venture, rejected the report on Wednesday. “The Volkswagen partnership is going incredibly well and the JV roadmap remains unchanged,” he wrote on X.
Rivian’s Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said at an event earlier this month that he expected the relationship to “continue to expand and grow” and saw “opportunities to add” to it. He noted that the venture excludes Rivian’s AI and self-driving work.
The voice assistant license brings an AI product into the partnership, though not the self-driving software.
Volkswagen’s Account
Volkswagen addressed the report on its own third-quarter call on Thursday, hours before Rivian’s results. Christina Amann of Reuters asked Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer Arno Antlitz what the reported use of the Chinese architecture in Europe meant for the Rivian joint venture.
“We decided on basically a split of our electric architecture. We have an electric architecture for the Western world, basically Europe and US,” Antlitz said, describing it as the architecture “that we developed together with Rivian,” according to a transcript of the call.
Antlitz did not rule out the move the magazine described. “We also look whether we, or we evaluate whether we can use certain elements of our China architecture and of our China platform in certain areas in Europe,” he said.
“But the basic decision that we have a Western Hemisphere platform and have a basically Eastern China platform with the Global South is where we stand today, and this hasn’t changed,” he added. He did not say when Volkswagen would decide or how much of its European lineup could be affected.
Antlitz said Volkswagen aims to reach cost parity with its next-generation SSP platform “towards 2030,” partly by benchmarking components from its operations in Anhui, China, where he said teams had cut platform costs by almost 50%.
Volkswagen’s presentation listed a €0.9 billion ($1.0 billion) payment to Rivian among the items that reduced its automotive net liquidity in the first nine months. Barclays analyst Henning Cosman said on the call that there “should also be less M&A outflow to Rivian” next year.
Volkswagen posted a third-quarter operating loss of €5.86 billion ($6.5 billion) on revenue of €75.28 billion ($84.1 billion), including €7.76 billion ($8.7 billion) of special items, according to the presentation.
What the Venture Pays
The software and services segment, which includes the venture’s development work, grew revenue 45% from a year earlier to $605 million in the third quarter. It posted a $256 million gross profit, a 42% margin, more than Rivian’s total gross profit of $176 million.
Rivian said growth came from electrical architecture and software development services for the venture, repair and maintenance, and Autonomy+. In the second quarter, the venture accounted for $308 million, or 60%, of the segment’s revenue, the company said in July. Rivian did not give the third-quarter share.
The company expects to recognize revenue for the venture’s development work through about mid-2028, it said, adding that its expectations “have changed over time and could change in the future.”
Volkswagen funded a $1 billion loan to Rivian on October 7 under the partnership, which is worth up to $5.8 billion. A further $460 million equity investment is targeted at the earlier of the first Volkswagen vehicle on the road with the venture’s hardware and software or January 2028, subject to conditions.
Rivian Assistant and RivianOS 2
Rivian Assistant, the voice assistant whose technology is being licensed, arrived on the R2 in October, “bringing the same hands-free, voice-powered control R1 owners have loved to our newest vehicle,” the company said. The October over-the-air update added Gmail integration.
Rivian said it rebuilt its infotainment system as RivianOS 2 across all its consumer vehicles, with a graphics engine built on Unreal Engine 5.
Rivian said its control of “the entire technology stack — compute, sensors, displays, lighting and sound” lets it roll out vehicle-wide over-the-air updates. R2 owners gained “Pet Cam,” a live view of their pet from the Rivian app.
Autonomy Timeline
Rivian said take rates for Autonomy+, which it began charging for in April, were “trending ahead of our expectations.” It did not give figures.
Point-to-Point, which will let drivers enter an address and have the vehicle drive the route under supervision, is set for a limited rollout later this year through the invitation-only Autonomy Early Access Program, with availability to all Autonomy+ subscribers in 2027, the company said. Rivian had set out that split on its website when it opened the program on October 15.
Scaringe said on the July 30 call that Rivian expected “to begin rolling out point-to-point capabilities by the end of this year.” Rivian has since told some eligible owners to “check back” for the sign-up tile.
The presentation did not repeat the eyes-off target for 2027 and the Level 4 robotaxi target for 2028 that appeared in its second-quarter presentation. It also gave no update on its in-house RAP1 chip or LiDAR, which Rivian has said will reach employees’ vehicles first and has not dated for customers.
Uber and Third Dimension
Rivian said it expects to reach its next milestone under the Uber robotaxi partnership by the end of the year, which would unlock a further $250 million equity investment. A March agreement provides for Uber to invest up to $1.25 billion through 2031, tied to autonomy milestones.
The company also cited its acquisition of Third Dimension AI, whose technology builds 3D digital twins and synthetic driving environments, including edge cases. Rivian said the deal speeds up its closed-loop simulation, which it called “critical for model evaluation and validation as we progress toward driver-out systems.”
Rivian will hold its second Autonomy & AI Day on December 9.
