Over the past two years, Uber has been aggressively building its autonomous vehicle empire through partnerships and investments in over 30 companies worldwide. After initially developing its own self-driving technology through Uber Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) starting in 2014, Uber faced significant setbacks including legal battles, leadership changes, and a fatal crash, prompting it to sell ATG to Aurora in 2020. Despite stepping back from direct development, Uber maintained equity stakes in several AV companies and then renewed its focus on self-driving vehicles through collaborations and strategic investments starting in 2022, accelerating this effort significantly in 2024.

Among its key partnerships, Uber holds nearly 20% of Aurora’s Class A equity and continues to collaborate on self-driving truck operations through Uber Freight. The company also has significant arrangements with autonomous vehicle firms such as Lucid Motors, with a $500 million investment and plans to deploy at least 35,000 Lucid vehicle-based robotaxis equipped with Nuro’s self-driving technology. In addition, Uber is working with a range of tech and automaker partners including Nvidia, which provides AI and autonomous vehicle platforms powering robotaxis aiming to launch in dozens of cities globally by 2028, and Rivian, with a $1.25 billion deal to build thousands of autonomous R2 SUVs for Uber’s network.

Uber’s autonomous vehicle network also spans numerous other collaborators worldwide, including Chinese companies Baidu and WeRide, UK startup Wayve, German automaker Mercedes-Benz, and robotaxi operators Pony.ai, Zoox, and Waymo, albeit with the latter scaling back its partnership. Several of these deals involve at-scale deployment plans or commercial services, like WeRide’s driverless robotaxi operations in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, Avride’s robotaxi rollouts in Dallas and Madrid, and Motional’s autonomous ride service in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Uber is also making strides in autonomous last-mile delivery by teaming with startups like Serve Robotics, Starship Technologies, and others across the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

This expansive ecosystem underscores Uber’s strategy to blend direct investment, technology licensing, and fleet management partnerships to become a leading global operator in autonomous ride-hailing and delivery. While Uber no longer develops its own underlying AV technology, it is strategically assembling a diverse, global portfolio of alliances while expanding commercial robotaxi and autonomous delivery services on its app. The company aims to scale its autonomous operations rapidly over the next several years with a goal of deploying tens of thousands of robotaxis across multiple continents by 2030.