April 15 (Reuters) – Uber has committed more than $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 robotaxis, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Uber did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Uber is positioning itself as a marketplace for multiple robotaxi operators, and has partnered across much of the autonomous vehicle industry, including with, Baidu, Rivian and Lucid, and has outlined plans to launch robotaxi 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 robotaxi fleets in the next few years, FT reported citing their calculations based on analyst estimates and people familiar with Uber’s deals. The agreements are contingent on its partners hitting certain deployment milestones.
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.
(Reporting by Disha Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonia Cheema and Nivedita Bhattacharjee)
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