Rivian Automotive and Uber Technologies have announced a partnership to help accelerate both companies’ autonomous vehicle plans, expecting to deploy 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robotaxis in the first phase of R2 robotaxi deployment. Initial deployments are expected to begin in San Francisco and Miami in 2028 and will expand to 25 cities by 2031.
Uber will invest up to $1.25bn in Rivian through to 2031, subject to the achievement of certain autonomous milestones by specific dates, building towards a scaled, fully-autonomous fleet of Rivian R2 robotaxis, which will be available exclusively through the Uber platform. An initial $300m investment has been committed to following signing, subject to regulatory approval.
Should all milestones be achieved, the companies will have deployed thousands of unsupervised Rivian R2 robotaxis across 25 cities in the US, Canada, and Europe by the end of 2031. The companies also have the option to negotiate the purchase of up to 40,000 more autonomous Rivian R2 vehicles beginning in 2030.
RJ Scaringe, Founder and CEO of Rivian said:
“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. The scale of Rivian’s growing data flywheel coupled with RAP1, our state of the art in-house inference platform, and our multi-modal perception platform make us incredibly excited for the rapid advancement of Rivian autonomy over the next couple of years.”
Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber said:
“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 US. 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.”
Meanwhile, Uber Technologies and NVIDIA are to expand their autonomous vehicle partnership. The companies, supported by their growing roster of automaker partners, plan to launch a global fleet of entirely NVIDIA software-driven autonomous vehicles, starting in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the first half of 2027 and scaling across 28 cities globally by 2028.
Central to this deployment is the NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion autonomous vehicle platform and NVIDIA Alpamayo, a next-generation reasoning-based AI model for autonomous vehicles designed to handle complex “long-tail” scenarios – such as unpredictable construction zones or erratic pedestrian behavior—using chain-of-thought logic, marking NVIDIA’s evolution into a full-stack L4 software provider.
“Autonomous technology holds enormous promise to make transportation safer, more reliable, and more accessible,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber. “By expanding our partnership with NVIDIA and combining advanced AI with Uber’s global network and operating experience, we are laying the foundation for an increasingly multi-player AV world, ensuring broad commercialization and helping to bring robotaxi service to more riders over time.”
“The ‘ChatGPT moment’ for physical AI has arrived—robotic systems can now reason about the complexities of the physical world,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Uber is building one of the world’s most expansive autonomous ride-hailing platforms. We are delighted to connect NVIDIA’s large ecosystem of robotaxi-ready partners to the Uber network to bring the magic of robotaxis to cities worldwide.”
NVIDIA and Uber will implement a phased deployment strategy in each launch city. This will begin with a fleet of data-collection vehicles to help train the Alpamayo engine on city-specific driving nuances. Following this phase, the fleet will transition to an operator-led launch, before transitioning to fully driverless Level 4 deployments. This systematic approach is intended to support an effective scale-up to 28 cities with driverless operations across North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia by 2028.
(Picture: Uber)
