Uber is tapping Rivian to build automated taxis in a deal worth up to $1.25 billion

Rivian said Thursday it is teaming up 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 electric car 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 planned launches in San Francisco and Miami in 2028.

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

While the agreement may be lucrative for Rivian, it is full of risks and challenges.

Rivian has not yet begun production of the R2 SUV; She said manufacturing is expected to begin by June. It has also not tested and deployed a self-driving system designed for robotaxis. To raise the bar even higher, the robotaxi will supposedly be built at Rivian’s Georgia factory, which is still under construction.

These obstacles do not appear to have dampened the resolve of Rivian or the resolve 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 and AI Day in December that this work enables the startup to “pursue opportunities in the ride-sharing space.”

In fact, Scaringe was behind the company’s 2021 decision to abandon 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, dubbed the Rivian Autonomy Platform, will debut in 2024 in the automaker’s second-generation R1 vehicles. It’s the basis of Rivian’s plan to increase capability over time from hands-free driving on certain highways to point-to-point navigation, expected late this year, which aims to automate driving controls during the entire drive.

Ultimately, Rivian wants to offer a hands-off, no-look system with a hardware upgrade, including adding a lidar sensor and an “autonomous computer” that can process 5 billion pixels per second. This upgraded device will be launched in the R2 SUV version in late 2026.

Although these features are capable, they are still not considered fully autonomous driving systems, as the driver is never expected or responsible for assuming control.

However, the startup is keen to eventually offer this level of automated driving. On the company’s Autonomy Day, it laid out plans for what it calls “Personal L4,” referring to the level set by the Society of Automotive Engineers at which a self-driving vehicle can operate in a given area without human intervention.

Automated driving remains one of Rivian’s biggest areas of focus, Scaringe said on stage at SXSW 2026 last week. “Our path toward laissez-faire and inattention in 2027 is something we spend more money on than anything else,” Scaring said.

He is optimistic about the rate of progress.

“If you look at the progress on autonomy in the past five years and try to use it as a rough measure to predict the next five years, you will be greatly wrong. The rate of progress is very different from looking forward five years than looking back five years. The past, in this case, is not a good indicator of the future.”

Rivian isn’t the first electric vehicle startup to be tapped by Uber to build a robotaxi. Last year, the ride-hailing giant said Lucid Motors would work with autonomous vehicle technology company Nuro to make a robotaxi based on Lucid’s Gravity SUV. These robots are expected to be commercially deployed by the end of this year in San Francisco.

Uber has partnered with more than 25 robotaxi or self-driving vehicle companies around the world. Its most notable partnership to date is with Waymo, which includes the Alphabet-owned company’s robotaxis running on the Uber app in Austin and Atlanta. Uber also has deals with Motional and Baidu, which is a major investor in British startup Wayve.