Uber Technologies has committed more than US$10-billion to buying thousands of autonomous vehicles and taking stakes in their developers, breaking from its asset-light “gig economy” business model to avoid disruption from robo-taxis, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
Uber is positioning itself as a marketplace for multiple robo-taxi operators, and has partnered across much of the autonomous vehicle industry, including with Baidu, Rivian and Lucid, and has outlined plans to launch robo-taxi services in at least 28 cities by 2028.
These deals put Uber on track to invest more than $2.5-billion in equity stakes and spend over $7.5-billion on robo-taxi fleets in the next few years, the FT reported (paywall), citing calculations based on analyst estimates and people familiar with Uber’s deals. The agreements are contingent on its partners hitting certain deployment milestones.
Read: Uber commits R5-billion to South Africa amid licensing woes
Interest in driverless taxis has surged in recent months after years of missed promises, with artificial intelligence and tech partnerships offering hopes of solving complex traffic scenarios faster and mitigating high costs.
Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment. — Disha Mishra, (c) 2026 Reuters
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