Uber to invest $1.25 billion in Rivian as part of new robotaxi deal

Uber and Rivian are joining forces to deploy 50,000 fully autonomous robo-taxis over the coming decades, the companies announced Thursday. As part of the deal, Uber will invest $1.25 billion in Rivian through 2031, provided Rivian meets certain autonomy milestones, starting with an initial $300 million at signing. (The deal is still subject to regulatory approval.)

The news signals a big vote of confidence in Rivian’s nascent autonomy efforts, which include designing its own custom AI chips to power Level 4 autonomous vehicles. Uber, meanwhile, has embarked on a robo-taxi partnership of sorts, bringing together various companies from all parts of the world while promising access to its hundreds of millions of customers.

Rivian and Uber said the first phase of their partnership will involve deploying 10,000 autonomous R2 vehicles as robo-taxis in multiple cities, starting with San Francisco and Miami in 2028. The companies said they plan to expand to 25 additional cities by 2031. Rivian’s fleet of autonomous robo-taxis will be available exclusively on the Uber app.

In many ways, it’s a similar deal to the one Uber struck with Lucid last summer, including an initial $300 million investment and the promise of tens of thousands of robo-taxis. Did Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe see this deal and ask: why not us too?

To be sure, Rivian’s autonomous capabilities are still largely theoretical. The company has not yet delivered, much less publicly demonstrated, most of what it claims to be working on. Last year, Rivian rolled out its universal hands-free driving feature, covering 3.1 million road miles in the United States and Canada, for second-generation R1 vehicles via a December 2025 software update. And later this year, it plans to launch point-to-point hands-free driving, which includes navigating turns, intersections, and on- and off-ramps. Rivian also plans to add lidar sensors, a crucial part of Level 4 autonomy, to its R2 vehicles later in 2026.

If Rivian meets all milestones set out in the deal with Uber, the companies say they will deploy “thousands of unsupervised Rivian R2 robo-taxis in 25 cities in the United States, Canada and Europe by the end of 2031.” The inclusion of Europe will certainly excite Rivian watchers, given that the company has yet to establish a presence overseas. The companies also say they will have the opportunity to negotiate the purchase of up to 40,000 additional autonomous vehicles starting in 2030, for a total of 50,000.

Uber’s money comes at a particularly crucial time for Rivian, as it enters the initial production phase of the R2. At the start of this year, Rivian reported having about $6 billion in cash, including about $1 billion from its partnership with Volkswagen. But the company will likely spend more than $2.5 billion this year alone to increase production of the R2. Uber’s $300 million investment will help soften the blow a little, but not much.

Meanwhile, Uber faces its own challenges. The company has announced numerous deals with a wide variety of players, including autonomous startups like Motional, Nuro and Wayve and automakers like Lucid and Volkswagen. Uber wants to become the go-to network for all robo-taxis in the future, offering a variety of benefits to potential partners, such as fleet services and training data.

Still, the company will need to overcome doubts about its relevance – and its continued existence as a source of income for millions of drivers around the world – as more robo-taxis hit the road.