Uber has committed more than $10 billion to building the world's largest autonomous vehicle network, partnering with and in some cases directly investing in more than 30 AV companies over the past two years1,3. The company is pursuing a platform strategy — serving as the ride-hailing layer for other companies' self-driving technology rather than developing its own.
The total commitment breaks down into approximately $2.5 billion in equity investments and roughly $7.5 billion in fleet purchases. Among the largest individual moves: Uber has invested more than $500 million in Lucid and now owns over 11% of the company, with orders for at least 35,000 Lucid vehicles for its robotaxi fleet. Rivian is building robotaxis based on the R2 SUV for Uber, with initial deployment planned for San Francisco and Miami in 2028.
The company launched its Autonomous Solutions division in February 2026. Uber expects autonomous vehicles operating in at least 10 cities by the end of 2026 and targets 28 cities by 2028.
Not every partnership is holding. Waymo ended its Phoenix pilot with Uber in July 2026, and Bloomberg reported in late July that Waymo is exploring options to exit its entire Uber partnership. ANALYSIS Waymo's withdrawal from the Uber relationship removes one of the most prominent AV operators from Uber's network and raises questions about whether Uber's platform model can retain partners that have their own consumer-facing ride-hailing ambitions.
Uber's remaining partner roster spans robotaxis, delivery robots, and autonomous trucks. Nuro is supplying self-driving software for Uber's premium robotaxi service. Wayve has a $300 million deal contingent on deploying robotaxis in London, and the company is part of a $1.2 billion raise. Waabi has $250 million in milestone-based capital for robotaxi deployment. WeRide received $100 million to expand from Abu Dhabi and Dubai to 15 more cities by 2030.
The approach represents a reversal from Uber's earlier in-house AV efforts. The company created Uber Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) in 2014 and recruited dozens of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's robotics program. In 2016, Uber acquired Otto, a self-driving truck company founded by former Google self-driving engineer Anthony Levandowski, and began testing AVs on public streets across California, Pittsburgh, and Arizona. That program collapsed after Waymo's trade secrets lawsuit, the resignation of Travis Kalanick in 2017, and a fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona, in 2018 in which a self-driving Volvo XC90 struck and killed a pedestrian. Uber suspended testing and, in 2020, walked away from its in-house AV development.
Under CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, the company pivoted to the current partnership-driven model. Uber provides access to 183 million monthly active users across more than 15,000 cities in over 70 countries — a distribution footprint it is offering as the core value proposition to AV developers.
ANALYSIS The scale of capital deployed — $10 billion across equity and fleet purchases — signals that Uber is treating autonomous vehicles as central to its long-term business rather than as an experimental add-on. The multi-partner approach distributes technology risk but introduces dependency on third-party timelines and, as the Waymo exit illustrates, partner retention risk.