TechCrunch Mobility: Uber everywhere, all at once

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If you haven’t noticed, Uber is suddenly everywhere, at least when it comes to autonomous vehicles. The company sold off Uber ATG, its in-house autonomous vehicle development unit, back in 2020. Uber shed a number of its moonshots — although it maintained an equity stake in all of them — so it could focus on its core businesses of delivery and ride-hailing. 

But Uber never gave up entirely on AVs. It’s spent the past two years locking up partnerships with dozens of autonomous vehicle technology companies across delivery, drones, trucking, and robotaxis. It has taken a worldview, too, making agreements with Chinese companies to launch robotaxis in Europe and the Middle East, as well as startups like U.K.-based Wayve. 

And now there is another one with Rivian. The TL;DR of the deal is Uber will make an initial $300 million investment in Rivian and will buy 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robotaxis ahead of a planned rollout in San Francisco and Miami in 2028. Uber has the option to buy up to 40,000 more starting in 2030. This fleet will be exclusively available on Uber’s network. 

Here’s how I am thinking about this deal. While the total deal could be as high as $1.25 billion, Uber’s initial outlay is relatively small. And the risk ratio is heavily weighted toward Rivian. It’s also the only deal that Uber has made in which the company is the developer of the self-driving system and the vehicle manufacturer. 

Rivian hasn’t started producing the R2 SUV yet, nor has it tested and deployed a self-driving system designed for robotaxis. To raise the hurdle even higher, the robotaxi is supposed to be built in Rivian’s Georgia factory, which is still under construction. 

And the EV maker has already made at least one sacrifice in hopes of pulling it off. Rivian said it no longer expects to meet its profitability goal in 2027 because of how much money it is spending on its autonomy efforts.

In our newsletter, we had a poll asking, Are the risks too high for Rivian? Sign up here to get Mobility in your inbox and let your voice be heard in our polls!

A little bird

Speaking of Uber, a little bird hinted that the ride-hailing company might have been in talks with Rivian for its robotaxi deal for quite a long time. One person directly familiar with both companies told me a deal like this wouldn’t happen overnight. After I asked for more specifics, I got a question in return: “Does RJ strike you as someone who has a strategic horizon that short?” Touché!

Got a tip for us? Contact Kirsten Korosec at [email protected] or via Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at [email protected]. 

Deals!

Like Uber, Nvidia is everywhere. Or at least wants to be. The company has made numerous investments — either direct cash injections or in-kind chip deals — in autonomous vehicle technology companies. And it’s also locking up partnerships with automakers — as we saw this week during its GTC conference — in a bid to sell its autonomous vehicle development platform called Nvidia Drive Hyperion. 

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced onstage deals — either new or expanded — with BYD, Geely, Hyundai, and Nissan for its 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 AVs is worth noting.  

“The ChatGPT moment of self-driving cars has arrived. We now know we could successfully autonomously drive cars,” Huang said during his GTC keynote, noting that altogether the four automakers build 18 million cars each year.

Other deals that got my attention …

Advanced Navigation, an 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 Company, the Los Angeles electric boat startup, raised $50 million in a Series C funding round from Eclipse, a16z, Menlo Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Necessary Ventures, and Offline Ventures.

BusRight, the school bus routing 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 up companies in major industrial sectors — like automotive and aerospace. The plan is to then modernize these companies using AI models developed by Bezos’ new startup Project Prometheus. 

Rivr, a Zurich-based autonomous robotics startup known for its stair-climbing delivery robot, was acquired by Amazon. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Trevor Milton, the founder of the now-bankrupt electric truck startup Nikola who was pardoned by President Trump, is trying to raise $1 billion for AI-powered planes. 

Zenobē Energy has purchased Revolv, a San Francisco-based fleet charging startup, for an undisclosed amount. 

Notable reads and other tidbits

A cyberattack on U.S. vehicle breathalyzer company Intoxalock has left drivers across the United States stranded and unable to start their vehicles.

Kodiak has expanded commercial autonomous freight operations to the Dallas-El Paso corridor. This is the company’s second major route and a core part of its network expansion roadmap, according to COO Michael Wiesinger.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration upgraded its investigation into the performance of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software in low-visibility conditions. The probe has now been escalated to an “engineering analysis,” its highest level of scrutiny and a required step before the agency tells a company to issue a recall. 

One more thing …

I mentioned in last week’s edition to keep an eye out for my interview with Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe. We covered a lot of ground and I found his comments about robotics particularly interesting. To summarize, Scaringe thinks companies are approaching industrial robotics all wrong. His new startup, Mind Robotics, is going to do things differently and focus more on robotic hands and steering clear of building robots that can do back flips. 

As Scaringe told me: “I think what’s missed in industrial [robotics] and this is one of the things we really see clearly, is the work happens with the hands. So, the hands are very, very important. Everything else, from a robotic system point of view, is to get the hands to the right place. And so the ability for the robots to do really complex motions, like, let’s say, like a back flip, that actually just means the robot has a lot of unnecessary complexity in it for the vast majority of tasks.” You can read the interview here.