Dive Brief:
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Lucid Group on Tuesday announced an expanded partnership with Uber, including a new $200 million investment in Lucid plus the commitment to purchase at least 35,000 vehicles that include Lucid Gravity and upcoming midsize EVs—15,000 more than previously announced—for use in Uber’s future global robotaxi service. This brings Uber’s total investment in Lucid to $500 million.
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Saudi Public Investment Fund affiliate Ayar Third Investment Company also committed to a new $550 million stock investment. Including a $300 million registered offering of common stock, the transactions add up to a $1.05 billion influx, according to the company, which announced the financial news the same day as it confirmed new CEO Silvio Napoli.
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"We continue to deepen our commitments with both Lucid and Nuro because both companies are executing extremely well against our fast-moving shared roadmap," said Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, in a separate release, with Lucid’s upcoming midsize platform creating “an even clearer path to stronger unit economics.”
Dive Insight:
With the additional investment from Uber, Lucid is able to point toward the autonomy and robotaxis that it sees as the bigger long-term bet toward opening up new revenue streams—beyond chipping away at margins and inching toward profitability with its upcoming midsize EV platform. Lucid’s operating loss for 2025 was roughly $3 billion.
Lucid unveiled a jointly developed “global robotaxi” project with Uber and Nuro at CES in January. Then at its Investor Day event in March, along with new technical details of its upcoming midsize platform, Lucid revealed a two-seat electric robotaxi concept called Lunar, which is built on the midsize platform and appears to rival the Tesla Cybercab.
It also in March confirmed that it plans to offer autonomous driving as a monthly subscription in its vehicles starting in 2027. The automaker is considering a range of offerings, from a $69-per-month tier offering enhanced driver assist technology up to a $199-per-month tier for future Level 3 and higher automated driving capabilities.
Nuro describes itself as a physical AI company; it created the autonomy platform set to enable the Lucid-Uber project and more. Uber’s partnership with Nuro extends outside the Lucid arrangement and started with a food delivery partnership in 2022.
Additionally, Uber’s investments in robotaxi technologies go beyond Nuro and Lucid. Uber has also partnered with Wayve, and it has been expanding its partnership with Motional, which is majority-owned by Hyundai Motor Group. Motional announced last month that its rideshare services are being rolled out on the Las Vegas Strip. Initially that service features a vehicle operator-monitor in the driver seat, but the company says a fully driverless service will start by the end of 2026.
The first deployments of Lucid Gravity robotaxis under the project with Nuro and Uber have been planned for the San Francisco Bay Area later in 2026. California-based Lucid builds vehicles in Arizona and Saudi Arabia, and PIF and Ayar have invested a cumulative amount of more than $9 billion in Lucid. They own about 60% of the automaker’s shares, according to a November 2025 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In its 10-K filing, Lucid describes itself as a “controlled company” within Nasdaq rules, stating that PIF and Ayar “beneficially own a significant equity interest.”
