Uber aims to become the all-in-one platform for robotaxi services

Uber has a clear pitch for autonomous vehicle developers: let Uber handle the operational heavy lifting.

The ride-hailing and food delivery giant has launched a new division called Uber Autonomous Solutions, aimed at taking on the full range of work required to run businesses built around robotaxis, self-driving trucks, and sidewalk delivery robots. That includes software, support services, and many of the day-to-day operational responsibilities that AV companies typically need to build out on their own.

Announced on Monday, the initiative formalises what Uber has been steadily building toward over several years.

Uber has accumulated partnerships with nearly two dozen autonomous vehicle technology companies across multiple categories — robotaxis, autonomous trucking, sidewalk delivery robots, and drones. The company has also invested directly in a number of these firms, including Lucid, Nuro, Waabi, and China’s WeRide. Uber has also invested $100 million in building fast-charging and autonomous-vehicle charging stations and previously launched Uber AV Labs, a specialised engineering group designed to collect and provide data to support robotaxi partners.

Uber has made the partnerships and the investments. Now it wants to make itself essential to the entire autonomous ecosystem.

“AV tech teams should be able to focus on what they do best: building software that can safely power an autonomous world,” said Sarfraz Maredia, Uber’s global head of autonomous mobility and delivery, who will lead the new initiative. He said the goal is to provide “operational depth wherever they need it,” including demand generation, rider experience, customer support, and managing the day-to-day fleet operations.

Uber says the division’s broader objective is to help partners reduce cost per mile and speed up time-to-market. The company also said it expects to help scale robotaxi deployments to more than 15 cities by the end of this year.

“What’s going to determine the success or failure of autonomous in the world is whether it can be commercialised, and Uber is going to be the thing that makes autonomy commercially viable,” said Uber President and COO Andrew MacDonald.

For Uber, “operational depth” includes infrastructure work such as training data and mapping, fleet financing, regulatory services, and managing how robotaxis and other autonomous vehicles perform during complex events and in challenging venues. Uber said it is using a fleet of specially equipped Lucid vehicles to collect data that can be shared with partners to help train their AI systems.

The division also plans to take on the user-facing experience, including customer support. Uber also wants to handle fleet management — including remote assistance — a topic that recently drew interest from federal lawmakers following concerns that Waymo relies on workers overseas. Under Uber’s plan, fleet management would also include insurance and the employment of human support staff who may need to intervene or assist when autonomous vehicles are operating in real-world conditions.

Uber’s move is both opportunistic and existential. The company sold its internal self-driving unit, Uber ATG, in 2020 after years of internal turbulence and heightened pressure following a fatal crash in which one of its test vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian. Uber exited that effort through a complex deal that transferred the division to Aurora.

Since then, Uber has tried to protect its place in a future dominated by autonomy through a growing network of partnerships and investments — and those relationships now span a wide swath of the AV landscape. Uber and Waymo are already working together on a robotaxi service in Atlanta and Austin. Uber has also locked in deals with Chinese firms Baidu, Momenta, and Pony.ai, sidewalk delivery robot companies Cartken, Starship, and Serve, and the U.K.-based automated driving technology startup Wayve. It has also partnered with robotaxi developers AVride and Motional, among others.

Uber also plans to launch a robotaxi service with Volkswagen in Los Angeles by the end of 2026, although the service is not expected to be fully driverless until 2027.

These partnerships give Uber some protection, but they still don’t fully offset the risk the company faces if robotaxi operators begin to erode ride-hailing and food-delivery revenue, which is still largely powered by human drivers. Uber is betting this new division can become that replacement, y turning the company into the all-in-one platform that makes large-scale autonomy workable in the real world.