Uber Technologies has quietly committed nearly half a billion dollars to autonomous driving startup Nuro, two people directly aware of the matter told Reuters on June 3, exposing the full size of a deal that ties Uber, Nuro and electric vehicle maker Lucid Motors together in a three-way push to put 35,000 robotaxis on the road.
The Three-Way Robotaxi Deal
The partnership pairs Lucid's Gravity SUVs and upcoming midsize EVs with Nuro's self-driving software stack and Uber's ride-hailing platform. Uber had previously disclosed a separate $500 million investment in Lucid alongside a "multi-hundred-million dollar" position in Nuro, including participation in a $203 million round earlier this year that valued Nuro at $6 billion. The newly-detailed follow-on commitments to Nuro are "significantly larger" than that first cheque, according to the sources, and tied to development and commercial milestones rather than paid up front.
Milestones Already Triggering Funds
Several of the early milestones have already been met on time, releasing tranches of Uber capital to Nuro, one source said. The remaining payments are gated on Nuro proving driverless testing later this year, carrying passengers without a safety driver by year-end, and scaling commercial service in 2027. Nuro already holds a California permit to test Gravity vehicles without a safety driver in some counties and was cleared in May to carry passengers in supervised trials.
Uber's Many-Bets Strategy
The Nuro stake is the latest brick in Uber's "platform of platforms" strategy: it has now backed or partnered with Baidu's Apollo Go in Dubai, Autobrains and Nvidia for a Munich robotaxi pilot, Wayve in London, Avride in Dallas, Rivian for purpose-built autonomous vehicles, and Waymo across several U.S. metros. The strategy hedges against any one supplier dominating the market and gives Uber leverage over the unit economics of robotaxi fleets it never has to own.
Why It Matters For Nuro
For Nuro, Uber money provides crucial runway. The Mountain View company pivoted in 2024 from delivery bots to licensing its self-driving stack to carmakers and mobility companies. Nuro is also backed by Nvidia and SoftBank. A San Francisco Bay Area launch with safety drivers is expected later this year, with Uber set to deploy Lucid-Nuro robotaxis in Waymo's home market by late 2026.
Reporting based on coverage from Reuters via Yahoo Finance and U.S. News.