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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.

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A little bird

Image Credits:Bryce Durbin

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 kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or via Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.

Deals!

Image Credits:Bryce Durbin

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

TechCrunch Mobility: Uber everywhere, all at once