Dive Brief:
- Uber Technologies will invest up to $1.25 billion in electric vehicle company Rivian through 2031 in a deal to add up to 50,000 of the company’s new R2 SUVs to use as robotaxis on the Uber ride-hailing network, Rivian announced in a press release.
- The initial commitment includes the purchase of 10,000 Rivian R2 vehicles by Uber or one of its fleet partners, with the option to negotiate the purchase of 40,000 more in 2030, per the release.
- “We couldn’t be more excited about this partnership with Uber — it will help accelerate our path to level 4 autonomy to create one of the safest and most convenient autonomous platforms in the world, " Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
The fully autonomous fleet of Rivian R2 robotaxis will be available exclusively through the Uber platform. An initial $300 million investment by Uber has already been committed following signing, although the deal is still subject to regulatory approval.
The full $1.25 billion investment by Uber will be tied to the achievement of certain “autonomous milestones” by specific dates, which were not disclosed. However, if all of the goals are achieved, the companies will deploy tens of thousands of Rivian R2 robotaxis across 25 cities in the U.S., Canada and Europe by the end of 2031.
Uber’s investment in Rivian follows similar partnerships with Waymo, Nuro and luxury EV maker Lucid Motors that were announced over the past several years.
In September 2024, Uber announced it was expanding its partnership with Waymo to deploy the company’s self-driving vehicles on the ride-hailing platform. The initial U.S. launch of Waymo's electric Jaguar I-Pace SUVs on Uber’s platform was in Austin, Texas, and Atlanta.
The rollout of the self-driving vehicles on the Uber network was also widely accepted by its customers, according to the company. In May 2025, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the average Waymo vehicles in Austin were “busier than 99%” of human-driven Uber vehicles in the city. “Consumers are loving the product,” he said at the time.
In September 2025, Lucid closed on a $300 million investment from Uber as part of a deal to add up to 20,000 of its luxury Gravity SUVs outfitted with autonomous driving technology to Uber’s global ride-hailing network over the next six years.
In January at CES, Lucid, Uber and autonomous driving technology startup Nuro unveiled a jointly developed “global robotaxi” that was purpose-built for Uber’s ride-hailing network. The EV is equipped with Nuro’s autonomous driving technology and an in-cabin passenger experience designed by Uber.
But Rivian is also developing a proprietary autonomous driving platform and software stack for its vehicles, including the R2. The company in December announced its third-generation autonomy platform, which it claims will be one of the most powerful combinations of sensors and inference compute available in a consumer vehicle in North America. The self-driving technology is expected to be available on Rivian vehicles by later this year.
Rivian’s third-gen autonomous driving platform includes a sensor suite of 11 cameras, five radars and one lidar unit powered by in-house-developed chips, according to the release.
“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.,” Khosrowshahi said in a statement. “That vertical integration, combined with data from their growing consumer vehicle base and experience managing the complexities of commercial fleets, gives us conviction to set these ambitious but achievable targets.”
Rivian recently launched its new R2 SUV, its third EV following the R1T pickup and R1S SUV. In January, The EV maker named Greg Revelle as its chief customer officer to lead its go-to-market strategy for the R2, including sales, marketing and operations.
The first R2 SUVs are being delivered to wait-list customers this spring. A more affordable version starting at $48,490 is due to arrive in 2027, according to Rivian’s website.
