Uber will invest up to $1.25bn (£930m) in electric vehicle maker Rivian as part of a deal to deploy 50,000 autonomous robotaxis across 25 cities in the US, Canada and Europe.
An initial $300m investment will go towards the purchase of 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robotaxis, with the option of buying an additional 40,000 in 2030.
Uber has struggled to transition to driverless vehicles in the past, even though the technology could be a major boon for the firm. In 2020, it sold its loss-making autonomous driving unit to start-up Aurora in a bid to accelerate its path to profitability. It finally achieved this in 2023, with a total profit of $1.1bn compared with a loss of $1.8bn the year before.
But Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, is becoming an increasing threat to Uber’s dominance of the taxi market. The service, which is entirely reliant on robotaxis for its rides, has been aggressively expanding to different cities in the US and recently announced plans to launch...