Uber agreed to invest up to $1.25 billion in Rivian through 2031, with the two companies planning to deploy up to 50,000 fully autonomous robotaxis across 25 cities in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
The deal announced on Thursday marks one of the largest financial commitments any ride-hailing company has made to a single carmaker for autonomous vehicles.
An initial $300 million investment has been committed following signing, subject to regulatory approval, with the remainder tied to Rivian achieving specific autonomous driving milestones by designated dates.
Uber had also invested $300 million in Rivian‘s direct competitor Lucid — back in July last year.
In the first phase, Uber or its fleet partners expect to purchase 10,000 fully autonomous R2 vehicles.
The companies have the option to negotiate the purchase of up to 40,000 additional autonomous R2 units beginning in 2030.
Initial commercial deployments are planned for San Francisco and Miami in 2028, scaling to 25 cities by 2031.
The R2 robotaxis will be available exclusively through the Uber platform, matching the strategy outlined for the Lucid Gravity robotaxis.
According to Rivian‘s founder and CEO RJ Scaringe, “this partnership accelerates our path to Level 4 autonomy and supports our goal of building one of the safest autonomous platforms in the world — across both shares and personally owned vehicles.”
As of press time, Rivian shares were trading 10% higher at $17.13 following the announcement.
The Autonomy Platform
The partnership is built around Rivian’s third-generation autonomy platform, unveiled in December 2025 at the company’s first Autonomy and AI Day in Palo Alto.
Scaringe wrote on X that “the combination of Rivian’s rapidly growing data flywheel, our in-house RAP1 inference platform (800 TOPS), and our multi-modal perception stack provides a powerful foundation to scale autonomy quickly and responsibly over the next couple of years.”
The system includes a multi-modal sensor suite of 11 cameras providing 65 megapixels of resolution, five radars, and one LiDAR unit — a sensor-fusion approach that contrasts with Tesla‘s vision-only strategy for its own Cybercab robotaxi.
The consumer version of the platform is planned to launch in late 2026, when the LiDAR-equipped R2 — and the gen-3 R1 models — are likely to debut.
During last year’s autonomy event, Scaringe said the system would target Level 4 autonomy — fully driverless operation without a safety operator — but did not disclose a specific timeline for achieving that capability.
Thursday’s announcement reveals that commercial deployment of unsupervised robotaxis is scheduled to begin in 2028.
For personally owned vehicles, Rivian announced last year that the Autonomy+ subscription will be priced at $2,500 as a one-time purchase or $49.99 per month — significantly below Tesla’s $8,000 upfront or $99 monthly for Full Self-Driving.
The company offered a free trial of the software throughout 2025 and has since extended it, having delayed the paid platform launch for the third time last February.
Uber AV Fleet
The Rivian deal caps a week of aggressive AV moves by Uber.
On Sunday, the ride-hailing company announced an expansion of its partnership with Nvidia to deploy Nvidia software-driven Level 4 robotaxis across 28 cities by 2028, using the DRIVE Hyperion platform and Alpamayo AI model.
Last October, Nvidia and Uber announced they were partnering to expand autonomous robotaxi and delivery fleets using Nvidia‘s AI-powered Drive platform.
By then, the companies said Stellantis would deliver at least 5,000 Drive AV-equipped vehicles for Uber’s operations in the US and internationally, with the ride-hailing company managing the fleets.
Last July, Uber also partnered with Nuro and Lucid Motors to deploy a Robotaxi service using Lucid Gravity vehicles and Nuro’s software.
Lucid‘s interim CEO Marc Winterhoff said last week that all engineering testing vehicles had since been delivered and the program remains on track to debut in late 2026.
At Lucid’s Investor Day last week, CEO Marc Winterhoff and Uber COO Andrew Macdonald confirmed the companies are finalising an agreement to deploy Lucid’s midsize platform vehicles at volumes comparable to the Gravity programme.
Additionally, Amazon subsidiary Zoox, which is developing purpose-built autonomous vehicles for robotaxi services, has struck a deal with Uber to have its vehicles available in the Uber app in Las Vegas this summer.
Uber aims to offer driverless rides across 15 cities by the end of 2026.
It already has driverless options in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas and Phoenix in the US, as well as several Middle East cities.
What the Milestones Require
Uber’s full $1.25 billion investment is not guaranteed — it requires Rivian to hit autonomous performance milestones by specific dates that the companies did not disclose.
The phased approach mirrors how other autonomous vehicle deployments have progressed.
Waymo, the Alphabet-backed robotaxi operator, currently completes more than 400,000 paid driverless rides per week across several US cities but took years of geo-fenced testing before reaching that scale.
For Rivian, the deal provides a significant new source of capital and guaranteed vehicle demand at a critical moment.
The company is about to start production of R2 at its Normal, Illinois plant, with customer deliveries expected to begin by the end of spring.
Rivian has guided for between 46,000 and 51,000 total vehicle deliveries in 2026, of which the R2 is expected to account for about 20,000 to 25,000 units.
