Uber Invests $1.25 Billion in Rivian to Deploy 50,000 Robotaxis Across 25 Cities — The Largest Robotaxi Partnership in History

Rivian Automotive and Uber Technologies announced on March 19, 2026 a landmark partnership to accelerate the deployment of fully autonomous ride-hailing vehicles, with Uber committing to invest up to $1.25 billion in Rivian through 2031. The initial commitment includes an immediate $300 million investment, with the balance tied to specific autonomous performance milestones by set dates. Uber, or its fleet partners, will purchase 10,000 fully autonomous Rivian R2 robotaxis in the first phase, with an option to negotiate the purchase of up to 40,000 additional vehicles from 2030 onwards. The initial commercial deployment is planned for San Francisco and Miami in 2028, expanding to 25 cities across the United States, Canada, and Europe by the end of 2031. The deal is structurally distinct from Uber’s other autonomous partnerships: unlike its arrangements with Waymo, Avride, or Zoox — where Uber is a distribution platform for another company’s autonomous stack — the Rivian partnership bets on an EV maker that has built its own silicon, its own autonomy software, and its own manufacturing infrastructure end-to-end. Rivian’s third-generation autonomy platform includes a sensor suite of 11 cameras totalling 65 megapixels, five radars, and one LiDAR unit. The platform is powered by two of Rivian’s proprietary in-house RAP1 chips delivering 1,600 TOPS of AI compute performance — making Rivian one of only two consumer EV manufacturers alongside Tesla that designs its own silicon specifically for autonomous driving. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe stated that the scale of Rivian’s data flywheel combined with RAP1 and its multi-modal perception platform makes the company confident in the rapid advancement of Rivian autonomy over the coming years. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi described his company as a committed believer in Rivian’s approach of designing the vehicle, compute platform, and software stack together.