Uber and Rivian strike $1.25bn robotaxi deal

The partnership puts Rivian’s in-house chip and full autonomous stack to work as a robotaxi platform, with commercial deployments planned for San Francisco and Miami in 2028.

Uber has been signing robotaxi deals at a pace that can make any single announcement feel routine. But this partnership with Rivian is structurally different from the rest of the pile. Unlike the company’s deals with Waymo, Avride, or Zoox, where Uber is essentially a distribution platform for someone else’s autonomous vehicle stack, this one bets on a car maker that has built its own silicon, its own autonomy software, and its own manufacturing, end to end.

Rivian (NASDAQ: RIVN) and Uber (NYSE: UBER) announced on Thursday that Uber will invest up to $1.25 billion in Rivian through 2031, contingent on Rivian hitting a series of autonomous performance milestones by specific dates.

An initial $300 million has been committed ...