Uber to invest over 1 billion dollars in Rivian to deploy tens of thousands of R2 robotaxis

Rideshare behemoth Uber announced a massive new partnership with Rivian, in which it will invest over one billion dollars in the American automaker to deploy up to 50,000 all-electric robotaxis, beginning with the new R2 SUV.

Uber Technologies is at it again, securing another trailblazer in electric mobility as a partner in its ever-growing network of rideshare services, logistics, and, more recently, robotaxis. Last week, we shared news that Uber had partnered with Zoox to deploy the latter’s purpose-built robotaxis on its network in Las Vegas this year, followed by Los Angeles in 2027.

As we pointed out at the time, Zoox was merely the latest in a growing list of EV and autonomous vehicle developers to partner with Uber – a process that usually includes heavy funding from the veteran rideshare network.

Aside from Zoox, some of Uber’s other robotaxi partners include Waymo, May Mobility, Momenta, Nuro, and EV automaker Lucid Motors. Today, Uber announced a huge investment in Rivian to bring even more cutting-edge, all-electric robotaxi-capable vehicles to its network, beginning with the recently unveiled R2.

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Uber and Rivian to deploy as many as 50,000 robotaxis

Rivian shared details of its new partnership with Uber Technologies this morning, detailing a massive investment from the rideshare network and initial plans for an R2 robotaxi deployment.

To begin, Uber has committed to an initial investment of $300 million (subject to regulatory approval). However, Uber said it is willing to invest up to $1.25 billion in Rivian through 2031, contingent on achieving specific autonomous milestones by specific dates.

In return, Rivian will use those funds to develop, scale, and supply Uber with a fleet of fully autonomous R2 robotaxis that will become exclusively available on the rideshare network. Rivian founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe, spoke about the new partnership:

We couldn’t be more excited about this partnership with Uber — it will help accelerate our path to level 4 autonomy to create one of the safest and most convenient autonomous platforms in the world. The scale of Rivian’s growing data flywheel coupled with RAP1, our state of the art in-house inference platform, and our multi-modal perception platform make us incredibly excited for the rapid advancement of Rivian autonomy over the next couple of years.

Per Rivian, the first phase of the robotaxi deployment is expected to include 10,000 fully autonomous R2 EVs rolling out in San Francisco and Miami in 2028, before expanding further. Should all aforementioned milestones be achieved by Rivian, the new partners expect to deploy unsupervised Rivian R2 robotaxis across 25 cities in the US, Canada, and Europe by the end of 2031.

Furthermore, the agreement gives Uber the option to negotiate the purchase of up to 40,000 more autonomous Rivian R2 vehicles beginning in 2030. That would be 50,000 Rivian robotaxis in total. Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, also spoke:

We’re big believers in Rivian’s approach—designing the vehicle, compute platform, and software stack together, while maintaining end-to-end control of scaled manufacturing and supply in the US. That vertical integration, combined with data from their growing consumer vehicle base and experience managing the complexities of commercial fleets, gives us conviction to set these ambitious but achievable targets.