Uber has agreed to invest up to $1.25bn in Rivian as part of a deal that could see the ride-hailing group buy as many as 50,000 autonomous vehicles.
Under the arrangement, Uber said it would put in $300m upfront.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
The total could rise to as much as $1.25bn in equity by 2031 if Rivian hits milestones linked to its self-driving technology, Uber said in a statement.
See also: Uber is steering towards a driverless future
Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber, said:“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.”
Alongside the investment, the agreement includes an initial order for 10,000 robotaxi versions of Rivian’s R2 SUV.
Uber and its fleet partners also have the option to purchase a further 40,000 vehicles from 2030.
The companies added there is an option to negotiate the purchase of up to another 40,000 autonomous Rivian R2 vehicles beginning in 2030.
The vehicles would start unsupervised service in San Francisco and Miami in 2028.
The rollout is expected to expand to 25 cities in the US, Canada and Europe by the end of 2031.
Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said:“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.”
The Rivian deal follows other recent robotaxi-related announcements from Uber.
Last week, it said it would partner with Amazon’s Zoox on robotaxi services starting in Las Vegas this summer, with an expansion to Los Angeles next year.
Last year, Uber took a $300mn stake in Lucid and agreed to buy 20,000 Gravity electric SUVs.
