Uber stock rises as company partners with Nvidia to launch autonomous taxi service

Investing.com - Uber Technologies’ stock rose 2% pre-market on Tuesday after the company announced a partnership with Nvidia to deploy a fleet of autonomous taxis powered by the AI giant’s self-driving software, with plans to launch in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2027.

The two companies said the service will expand to 28 cities worldwide by 2028, marking a significant step for Uber into the autonomous ride-hailing industry.

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These vehicles will operate on Nvidia’s DRIVE Hyperion platform, equipped with Alpamayo—a reasoning-based AI model designed to handle complex driving environments.

The project will initially use data collection vehicles to train the system for specific city conditions, followed by deployment under operator supervision, ultimately achieving fully autonomous Level 4 operation.

Uber stated that this collaboration is part of its broader strategy to build a “multi-party” autonomous driving ecosystem on its platform, allowing multiple developers and automakers to offer driverless taxi services instead of relying solely on internal technology.

As companies accelerate efforts to commercialize autonomous ride-hailing, this partnership intensifies competition in the sector. Alphabet’s Waymo remains the most advanced operator, offering fully autonomous ride services in cities like Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, Tesla is pushing its camera-based autonomous driving approach, aiming to launch its own driverless taxi service while leveraging its large-scale manufacturing capabilities.

Uber has also recently partnered with Lucid Group and autonomous startup Nuro to deploy driverless taxis on its platform, using Lucid vehicles powered by Nuro’s autonomous driving technology.

Lucid has announced plans to commercialize its Gravity SUV-based autonomous taxis starting this year as part of the collaboration. Developing autonomous driving systems remains costly, but if scaled successfully, companies see driverless taxis as a potentially high-profit revenue opportunity.

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