Uber announced Thursday that it has acquired $300 million in the American electric vehicle manufacturer Lucid, with the aim of building its own fleet of robotaxi vehicles.
The emerging self-driving taxi market is attracting significant interest, and Google's Waymo is currently the best-positioned company in the United States.
Tesla launched its first robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, at the end of June, in a limited area with a very limited fleet.
Uber has partnered with Waymo and is currently offering self-driving car rides in Atlanta, Georgia, and Austin.
But the deal announced Thursday is on a completely different scale: Uber is acquiring a stake in Lucid through a reserved capital increase.
At the current price, the $300 million Uber plans to invest represents approximately 3% of Lucid's capital.
This news sent the electric car manufacturer's shares up about 30% around 2:40 PM GMT on Wall Street.
As part of the agreement, Uber is committed to purchasing at least 20,000 self-driving vehicles based on the Lucid Gravity SUV model over six years, starting in the second half of 2026.
These vehicles, which will be owned by Uber and usable only through its platform, will be developed specifically for the company in collaboration with Nuro, a startup specializing in autonomous driving software.
In addition to Lucid, Uber will also invest in Nuro, according to a statement released Thursday.
Uber plans to deploy Lucid's self-driving vehicles in a "major U.S. city" by the end of 2026.
Lucid and Nuro announced testing of a prototype robotaxi on a closed route in Las Vegas.
Uber and Baidu announced on Tuesday a collaboration to integrate the Chinese tech giant's Apollo Go self-driving vehicles into the ride-hailing platform's offerings in several markets outside the United States and China.
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