is transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
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Uber and Rivian are joining forces to deploy 50,000 fully autonomous robotaxis over the next several decades, the companies announced Thursday. As part of the deal, Uber will invest $1.25 billion in Rivian through 2031, contingent on Rivian meeting 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 been on something of a robotaxi partnering spree, corralling a variety of companies from all parts of the globe 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 robotaxis in several cities, starting with San Francisco and Miami in 2028. The companies said they expect to expand to 25 additional cities by 2031. Rivian’s autonomous robotaxi fleet will be available exclusively on Uber’s app.
In many ways, it’s a similar deal to the one Uber made with Lucid last summer, including the $300 million initial investment and the promise of tens of thousands of robotaxis. Did Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe see that deal and ask, why not us too?
Rivian’s R2 is set to launch later this year. Image: Rivian
To be sure, Rivian’s autonomous capabilities are still largely theoretical. The company has yet to deliver, let alone publicly demonstrate, most of what it says it’s working on. Last year, Rivian rolled out its so-called Universal Hands-Free driving feature, covering 3.1 million miles of road in the US and Canada, for second-generation R1 vehicles via a December 2025 software update. And later this year, it expects to release point-to-point hands-free driving, which includes navigating turns, intersections, and on/off-ramps. Rivian also plans on adding lidar sensors, a crucial component of Level 4 autonomy, to its R2 vehicles later in 2026.
If Rivian hits all the milestones laid out in the agreement with Uber, the companies say they will deploy “thousands of unsupervised Rivian R2 robotaxis across 25 cities in the US, Canada, and Europe by the end of 2031.” The inclusion of Europe is sure to excite Rivian watchers, given that the company has yet to establish a presence overseas. The companies also say they will have the option to negotiate the purchase of up to 40,000 more autonomous vehicles beginning in 2030 — making it a total of 50,000.
The money from Uber comes at an especially crucial moment for Rivian, as it enters into the initial production phase for the R2. As of the beginning of this year, Rivian said it had about $6 billion in cash, including around $1 billion from its partnership with Volkswagen. But the company will likely spend upwards of $2.5 billion this year alone ramping up the R2’s production. The $300 million investment from Uber will help soften the blow a bit, but not much.
Meanwhile, Uber is facing its own set of 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 be the go-to network for all robotaxis in the future, offering a variety of sweeteners to potential partners, such as fleet services and training data.
Still, the company will need to overcome doubts that it will remain relevant — and continue to be a source of income for millions of drivers worldwide — as more robotaxis hit the road.