Uber taps Rivian to build robotaxis in deal worth up to $1.25B

Rivian said on Thursday that it is partnering with Uber to build thousands of robotaxis based on its upcoming R2 SUV. The deal could be worth up to $1.25 billion for the EV maker. 

Uber is kicking off the partnership with an initial $300 million investment in Rivian and is “expected to purchase 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robotaxis” ahead of a planned rollout in San Francisco and Miami in 2028.

Uber will have the option to buy up to 40,000 more autonomous R2 SUVs from Rivian starting in 2030. The two companies said they plan to launch the robotaxis in “25 cities in the U.S., Canada, and Europe by the end of 2031.” The fleet will be exclusively available on Uber’s network, according to the companies.

While the agreement is potentially lucrative for Rivian, it’s brimming with risk and challenges. 

Rivian hasn’t started producing the R2 SUV yet; it has said manufacturing is expected to begin by June. Nor has it tested and deployed a self-driving system designed for robotaxis. To raise the hurdle even higher, the robotaxi is supposed to be built in Rivian’s Georgia factory, which is still under construction. 

Those obstacles don’t appear to have softened Rivian’s resolve or the determination of its founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe, who has made automated driving technology a top priority for the company. He even hinted during the company’s inaugural “Autonomy & AI Day” in December that this work enables the startup to “pursue opportunities in the ride-share space.” 

Indeed, Scaringe was behind the company’s 2021 decision to ditch its previous rules-based framework for driver assistance in favor of an AI-first strategy that uses large language models to train the system how to perceive and navigate the world. This automated driving system is designed to learn from fleet data and become increasingly autonomous.

The result, called the Rivian Autonomy Platform, debuted in 2024 in the automaker’s second-generation R1 vehicles. It’s the foundation of Rivian’s plan to ratchet up capability over time from hands-free driving on certain highways to a point-to-point navigation feature, expected late this year, that will aim to automate driving controls during entire drives.

Ultimately, Rivian wants to offer a hands-off, eyes-off system via a hardware upgrade, including the addition of a lidar sensor and an “autonomy computer” that can process 5 billion pixels per second. This upgraded hardware will launch in a version of the R2 SUV in late 2026.

As capable as these features may be, they are still not considered fully autonomous driving systems, in which a driver is never expected to take over control. 

The startup is keen to eventually offer that level of automated driving, however. At the company’s autonomy day, it laid out plans for what it calls “personal L4,” a nod to the level set by the Society of Automotive Engineers at which an autonomous vehicle can operate in a particular area with no human intervention.

Automated driving remains one of Rivian’s biggest focus areas, Scaringe said onstage at SXSW 2026 last week. “Our path to get to hands-off, eyes-off in 2027 is something we’re spending more money on than anything else,” Scaringe said.

And he is bullish on the rate of progress. 

“If you were to look at the progress in autonomy in the last five years and try to use it as a rough metric or gauge to predict the next five years, you would be wildly wrong. The rate of progress is so much different than looking forward five years than looking backwards five years. The past, in this case, is not a good predictor of the future.” 

Rivian is not the first electric vehicle startup Uber has tapped to build robotaxis. Last year, the ride-hail giant said Lucid Motors would work with autonomous vehicle technology company Nuro to make robotaxis based on Lucid’s Gravity SUV. Those robotaxis are expected to be deployed commercially by the end of this year in San Francisco. 

Uber has partnered up with more than 25 dedicated robotaxi or autonomous vehicle companies around the world. Its most notable partnership to date is with Waymo, which involves the Alphabet-owned company’s robotaxis operating on Uber’s app in Austin and Atlanta. Uber also has deals with Motional and Baidu and is a major investor in U.K. startup Wayve.