Rivian no longer expects to meet a long-term expected profitability target in 2027 because of the money it is spending on its autonomy efforts, the company revealed on Thursday.
The company said it doesn’t expect to be EBITDA positive until next year as it sees R&D costs rising in line with its accelerated efforts to develop self-driving technology.
The admission was locked deep in one archiving which otherwise details Rivian’s new partnership with Uber to build robotaxi versions of the upcoming R2 SUV for the giant’s network.
Rivian declined to comment beyond what is described in the filing.
Rivian has long told shareholders that it could reach positive EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) in 2027, as long as it successfully launches the R2 SUV and grows its software revenue. But the company has faced a growing number of obstacles to that goal: The federal EV tax credit has stalled, its ability to sell regulatory credits to other automakers has been reduced, and its costs have risen due to President Trump’s tariffs.
These pressures certainly made it harder for Rivian to fall into the black. At least one analyst, Joseph Spak of UBS, wrote in February that he did not expect the company to reach positive EBITDA for “several years.” Rivian reported in February that it posted total net losses of $27 billion from its inception in 2009 to the end of 2025.
But it’s the company’s massive investment in developing self-driving technology that has caused it to delay its positive EBITDA target. Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said Rivian is spending more on autonomy research and development than anything else right now. The company annual filing reports spent $1.7 billion on R&D in 2025, up from $1.6 billion in 2024. The company attributed that jump to “increases in engineering, design and development costs, prototyping costs and software expenses to support our R2 launch and AI and autonomy initiatives.”
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Rivian is developing its own “grand driving model” and has designed its own custom processor as well as a “range computer” to power this software. It hopes to launch self-driving next year and aims to make its electric vehicles capable of “L4 personal driving,” a nod to the level set by the Society of Automotive Engineers at which an autonomous vehicle can operate in a specific area without human intervention.
Rivian first described many of these efforts in December at its first “Autonomy & AI Day” event, where Scaringe toured investors and press around the company’s Silicon Valley campus and offered test drives showing what the driver-assistance software can do.
The partnership with Uber announced Thursday is a completely new effort on top of everything revealed in December. It includes Uber investing up to $1.25 billion in Rivian and possibly buying up to 50,000 R2 SUVs. But the ride-hail giant is only investing $300 million to get started and will initially only order 10,000 R2s from Rivian. Much of the deal appears to have been loaded around 2030.
The company has several other major expenses ahead, too. It plans to start construction on a brand new factory in Georgia this year and is months away from starting production of the R2. The company told investors in February that it expects to spend between $1.95 billion and $2.05 billion this year.
