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If you haven’t noticed, Uber is suddenly everywhere, at least when it comes to autonomous vehicles. The company sold Uber ATG, its in-house autonomous vehicle development unit, in 2020. Uber shed a number of its moons — though it retained an equity stake in all of them — so it could focus on its core delivery and transportation businesses.
But Uber never completely abandoned AVs. It has spent the past two years closing partnerships with dozens of autonomous vehicle technology companies in the delivery, drone, trucking and robotaxi sectors. It also took a worldview, striking deals with Chinese companies to launch robotics in Europe and the Middle East, as well as startups like UK-based Wayve.
And now there’s another one with Rivian. The TL;DR of the deal is that Uber will make an initial investment of $300 million in Rivian and purchase 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robot taxis before the planned rollout in San Francisco and Miami in 2028. Uber has the option to purchase up to 40,000 more starting in 2030. This Uber fleet will be exclusively available.
Here’s how I feel about this deal. While the total deal could reach $1.25 billion, Uber’s upfront outlay is relatively small. And the risk ratio is heavily weighted towards Rivian. It’s also the only deal Uber has made in which the company is both the self-driving system developer and the vehicle manufacturer.
Rivian has not yet started production of the R2 SUV, nor has it tested and developed an autonomous driving system designed for robot taxis. To raise the bar even higher, the robotaxi is supposed to be built at Rivian’s factory in Georgia, which is still under construction.
And the EV maker has already made at least one sacrifice in hopes of achieving that. Rivian said it no longer expects to meet its 2027 profitability target because of the money it is spending on its autonomy efforts.
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A little bird
Speaking of Uber, a little bird hinted that the ride-hailing company may have been in talks with Rivian about its robotaxi deal for some time. A person directly familiar with both companies told me that such a deal would not happen overnight. After asking for more details, I got a question in return: “Does RJ strike you as someone who has such a short strategic horizon?” Touche!
Do you have a tip for us? Contact Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or via Signal at kkorosec.07 or via email to Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.
Offers!
Like Uber, Nvidia it’s everywhere. Or at least he wants to be. The company has made numerous investments — either direct cash infusions or chip-in-kind deals — in autonomous vehicle technology companies. And it’s also locking in partnerships with automakers — as we saw this week during the GTC conference — in an effort to sell its autonomous vehicle development platform called Nvidia Drive Hyperion.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced deals on stage — either new or expanded — with BYD, Geely, Hyundai and Nissan for the AV development platform. GM, Mercedes-Benz and Toyota have already signed deals with Nvidia to use the platform.
Nvidia has been making deals with automakers for years, but the pace and specificity of AV is worth noting.
“The ChatGPT moment of self-driving cars has arrived. Now we know that we could successfully drive autonomous cars,” Huang said during his GTC keynote, noting that the four automakers collectively manufacture 18 million cars each year.
Other offers that caught my eye…
Advanced navigationan Australian startup developing navigation and autonomous systems, raised $110 million in a Series C funding round led by Airtree Ventures, with strategic participation from Quadrant Private Equity and the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC).
Arc Boat Companythe Los Angeles-based electric boat startup has raised $50 million in a Series C funding round from Eclipse, a16z, Menlo Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Necessary Ventures and Offline Ventures.
BusRightthe school bus route and technology startup, raised more than $30 million in a round led by Volition Capital.
Jeff Bezos is reportedly raising $100 billion for a new fund that will focus on buying companies in major industrial sectors – such as automotive and aerospace. The plan is to then modernize these companies using artificial intelligence models developed by Bezos’ new startup Project Prometheus.
Riva Zurich-based autonomous robotics startup known for its stair delivery robot has been acquired by Amazon. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Trevor Miltonthe founder of now-bankrupt electric truck startup Nikola who was pardoned by President Trump is trying to raise $1 billion for airplanes powered by artificial intelligence.
Zenobē energy has was purchased Revolva San Francisco-based fleet charging startup, for an undisclosed amount.
Notable reads and other items
Cyber attack on American vehicle breathalyzer company Intoxalock has left drivers across the United States stranded and unable to start their vehicles.
Kodiak has expanded commercial autonomous freight in the Dallas-El Paso corridor. This is the company’s second major route and a key part of its network expansion roadmap, according to to COO Michael Wiesinger.
THE National Road Safety Agency upgraded her research on his performance TeslaFull Self-Driving (Supervised) software in low visibility conditions. The investigation has now escalated to a “mechanical analysis,” the highest level of scrutiny and a necessary step before the agency tells a company to issue a recall.
One more thing…
I mentioned this in last week’s edition to follow up my interview Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe. We covered a lot of ground and I found his comments on robotics particularly interesting. In summary, Scaringe believes that companies are approaching industrial robotics completely wrong. His new startup, Mind Robotics, will do things differently and focus more on robotic arms and avoid building robots that can do backflips.
As Scaringe told me: “I think what’s missing in the industry [robotics] and that’s one of the things that we really see clearly, is that the work is done by hands. So hands are very, very important. Everything else, from the point of view of the robotic system, is getting the hands to the right place. And so the ability of robots to do very complex movements, like, say, like a flip, that means the robot has a lot of unnecessary complexity for the vast majority of tasks.” You can read the interview here.
