Catenaa, Thursday, July 17, 2025- Uber will invest $300 million in EV maker Lucid in a robotaxi deal that aims to take on Tesla and Waymo, the companies said on Thursday.
Over six years starting in 2026, Uber will acquire and deploy over 20,000 Lucid Gravity SUVs that will be equipped with autonomous vehicle (AV) technology from startup Nuro, the three companies said in a statement.
The agreement illustrates the renewed plans and push for financing for self-driving cabs, years after a first wave of autonomous driving investment produced only a limited number of vehicles.
Tesla has recently launched a robotaxi trial in Austin, and Alphabet’s driverless taxi unit, Waymo, is speeding up its expansion.
As part of their announced deal, Uber will invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Lucid and Nuro, which supply self-driving technology to automakers, the joint statement said.
Of that, $300 million will go to Lucid, the EV maker said in a separate filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.
Following the news, Uber stock fell by 2% on Thursday while Lucid Group rose by over 30%.
The deal with Lucid follows Uber’s robotaxi agreement in April with Volkswagen, which will supply its ID. Buzz vans for commercial service are planned for Los Angeles next year.
But commercializing AV tech has been much harder than anticipated, with high costs, tight regulations and federal investigations forcing many, including General Motors’ Cruise, to shut down.
After years of missed promises, Tesla started a restricted trial with about a dozen of its Model Y SUVs in Austin, Texas, last month. CEO Elon Musk has said it will expand the service rapidly to other U.S. cities this year.
Waymo has been growing cautiously for years and operates in several US cities with about 1,500 vehicles. It crossed 100 million miles of autonomous driving this month.
A prototype of the Lucid-Nuro robotaxi is already operating autonomously on a closed circuit at Nuro’s testing facility in Las Vegas, the companies said.
