Uber has been assembling a roster of autonomous vehicle partners for years, with last week’s Rivian deal the latest addition.
The company signed two nearly identical investment-and-purchase agreements with the California-based EV makers Lucid and Rivian while quietly building optionality into which technology stack — and which company — ultimately delivers the self-driving future it needs.
Last week alone, the ride-hailing group expanded an existing partnership with chipmaker Nvidia, and agreed to invest up to $1.25 billion in Rivian and buy R2 SUVs for its robotaxi fleet.
The company is building a diversified robotaxi supply chain across multiple vehicle manufacturers and autonomy providers.-
The Rivian deal, disclosed in an SEC filing last week, followed a structurally similar agreement Uber signed with Lucid Motors in July 2025.
The 8-K filings reveal that Uber used with Rivian the same financial playbook while making a fundamentally different bet on autonomy.
The Same Playbook
Both deals route Uber‘s equity investment through the same entity: SMB Holding Corporation, a Delaware subsidiary of the ride hailing firm.
In both cases, SMB committed an initial $300 million through a private placement of the automaker’s Class A common stock, priced using the arithmetic average of the daily volume-weighted average price (VWAP) over 30 consecutive trading days prior to signing.
Both subscription agreements are subject to regulatory approval and include registration rights enabling eventual resale.
The filings disclose a separate Vehicle Production Agreement between Uber and the automaker, containing minimum vehicle purchase commitments conditional on the manufacturer meeting volume, quality, and specification thresholds.
It is clear in both cases that the resulting robotaxis will be available exclusively on Uber‘s platform.
The financial architecture is, in essence, a template.
Where They Diverge
The differences begin with scale.
Uber‘s Lucid deal is a $300 million investment tied to a minimum purchase of 20,000 Gravity SUVs over six years.
The Rivian agreement is structured as an initial $300 million investment with up to $950 million in additional tranches — a potential total of $1.25 billion through 2031 — contingent on Rivian meeting undisclosed autonomy-related milestones by fixed deadlines through 2031.
The EV maker’s vehicle commitment starts at 10,000 R2 SUVs, with an option to negotiate 40,000 more beginning in 2030, bringing the potential total to 50,000.
The Rivian partnership has a more complex legal framework. While the Lucid arrangement comprises two agreements — a Vehicle Production Agreement and a Subscription Agreement — Rivian‘s deal adds a third layer.
The deal with the Irvine-headquartered brand includes a 10-year Master Framework Agreement governing market exclusivity, most-favoured-nation pricing for the initial vehicle tranche, and software licensing fees.
Rivian is also licensing its autonomous driving software to Uber, creating a recurring revenue stream that does not apply in Lucid’s case.
The Autonomy Question
The provider of the autonomous technology is the sharpest divergence between the two partnerships.
In Lucid‘s case, Uber added Nuro as the Level 4 autonomous driving provider.
Under the three-party arrangement announced in July 2025, Lucid supplies the vehicle platform — a modified version of its Gravity SUV — while Nuro, the autonomous driving startup co-founded by former Waymo engineers, equips each vehicle with its Level 4 Nuro Driver sensor suite and software stack.
Lucid role is to build a production-ready, fleet-durable EV.
Nuro disclosed last week that it has “almost 100” Lucid Gravity vehicles in its robotaxi engineering fleet.
Rivian‘s deal is structured differently.
The EV maker is developing its own Level 4 autonomous driving system in-house, built on its third-generation autonomy platform announced at its inaugural Autonomy and AI Day last December.
The system uses a multi-modal sensor suite comprising 11 cameras, five radars, and one LiDAR unit, all powered by two of Rivian‘s custom-designed RAP1 inference chips.
But the SEC filing language is cautious with the development timeline.
Rivian “intends to develop” an autonomous driving system featuring its own Level 4 capability, as well as “certain technology” that will allow its vehicles to integrate into ride-hailing and logistics networks. The phrasing suggests the system is not yet complete.
Rivian and its suppliers still need to purchase the tooling required to manufacture and assemble the autonomous R2 variant.
The consumer R2 itself has not yet entered production — deliveries to internal staff are expected to begin soon from Rivian’s Normal, Illinois plant.
External customers will take delivery of the first units in late June, according to the management.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi framed this as a feature, not a bug.
“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.,” he said.
The distinction matters for timeline and execution risk.
Lucid’s Gravity is already in production and Nuro’s autonomy stack is further along in testing.
Rivian’s R2 robotaxi requires both a new vehicle and a new autonomy system to reach production simultaneously — a dual development challenge that prompted Rivian to disclose, in the same 8-K filing, that it no longer expects to reach adjusted EBITDA breakeven in 2027.
The company attributed the revision to increased R&D spending needed to accelerate its autonomy roadmap, and updated its 2026 guidance to an adjusted EBITDA loss of between $1.8 billion and $2.1 billion.
Lucid’s filing contained no equivalent guidance revision.
Lucid Deal Expanding
One week before Rivian announced its Uber partnership, Lucid disclosed at its March 12 Investor Day that the programme is growing beyond the Gravity.
Uber President and COO Andrew Macdonald told the event that the two companies are “finalising an agreement” to deploy Lucid’s upcoming midsize vehicle platform as a robotaxi at volumes “similar” to the 20,000 Gravity SUVs already under contract.
If the midsize deal matches the existing commitment, Uber’s total Lucid fleet would reach approximately 40,000 vehicles across two platforms — comparable to Rivian‘s maximum potential of 50,000.
Lucid interim CEO Marc Winterhoff confirmed the development is near completion.
“We started together with the Gravity, but we all knew this is more for the premium sector, and we need to go one step down,” he said. “We are totally excited about the status, which is almost — almost done.”
Macdonald described the Lucid-Uber-Nuro collaboration as deeper than Uber’s other autonomous partnerships.
“The depth of collaboration goes deeper than in many cases what are commercial agreements with other players,” he said, adding that teams work together daily on vehicle design and fleet integration.
Market’s Reaction
Wall Street reacted to both announcements similarly with an initial surge that quickly faded.
Lucid shares surged 36% on July 17, 2025, hitting an intraday high of $36.90 (split-adjusted) — which remains the stock’s 52-week high.
Within two weeks, the entire rally had been erased.
Sentiment was undercut by a 1-for-10 reverse stock split announced the same day, scepticism from analysts and the revelation that Uber, not Lucid, would own and operate the fleet.
Lucid shares were trading at $10.35 on Monday.
Rivian’s reaction was more muted from the start.
Shares rose as much as 12% intraday on March 19 to $17.40, but closed up just 3.9% at $16.13 as the simultaneous EBITDA guidance cut weighed on sentiment.
By the following day, the gains were fully erased amid the broader Iran-driven market sell-off, with Rivian closing at $14.91.
Shares were trading at $15.72 on Monday morning, lifted by the Trump-Iran relief rally rather than deal-specific momentum.
Uber’s stock barely moved on either announcement — consistent with the market’s view that its capital-light platform model is strengthened, not diluted, by these partnerships.
