Uber Bets $1.25B on Rivian to Scale Driverless Future Globally

Robotaxis now have a serious co-pilot. UberUBER

is committing up to $1.25B in RivianRIVN

to help deploy as many as 50K autonomous R2 SUVs across North America and Europe by 2031. The partnership begins with a $300M investment, with additional funding tied to future milestones.

• San Francisco and Miami launch first in 2028, with the fleet operating exclusively through Uber’s app, limiting competitor access.
• After a $3.6B loss in 2025, Rivian is leaning on the R2 launch this spring at ~$58K, with a cheaper ~$45K model coming next year.

Paving the way: Rivian only introduced hands-free driving last year, so full autonomy is still a big leap. Still, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is betting Rivian’s vertical integration and data edge can close that gap, while CEO RJ Scaringe points to its in-house autonomy stack as key to accelerating progress. As Waymo leads and TeslaTSLA

scales fast, Uber is also lining up deals with LucidLCID

, Zoox, and NvidiaNVDA

to secure its place in the market. Because in this game, catching up is already losing.