Rivian $RIVN ( ▲ 3.12% ) this week, announced plans to launch its autonomous driving package to customers this week. Additionally, the EV maker is set to develop its own custom AI self-driving chip, as part of larger efforts to dig into AI integration.
Driving the news: During the company’s first-ever Autonomy and AI Day event held last week Rivian announced plans to launch what it calls Universal Hands-Free (UHF) Driving in early 2026, as detailed in a press release.
The hands-free autonomous driving package, dubbed Autonomy Plus, will launch in early 2026 for customers with second-gen R1 models, and will be priced at $2,500 for a one-time purchase or $49.99 per month as a subscription. The company says it will be available on more than 3.5 million miles of U.S. and Canadian roads, and it will also be capable of operating off-highway on roads with clearly painted lines.
Diving deeper: The AI event also included a few other key AI-related announcements.
In-house silicon AI multi-chip design: Rivian is developing the Rivian Autonomy Processor (RAP1), a custom 5nm, multi-chip processor set to back the company’s Autonomy computer, starting in late 2026 with the upcoming R2 lineup.
Major AI update for the Rivian Autonomy Platform: The company is leaning further into AI with a ‘Large Driving Model’ (LDM) AI platform, set to be trained for self-driving.
Rivian Unified Intelligence and updated Rivian Assistant: Rivian is also leveraging AI into what it calls Rivian Unified Intelligence (RUI), a multi-modal and multi-LLM data foundation set to help improve service infrastructure, add predictive maintenance, and manage some vehicle functions, backed by an all-new Rivian Assistant AI voice interface.
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What they’re saying: “Our updated hardware platform, which includes our in-house 1600 sparse TOPS inference chip, will enable us to achieve dramatic progress in self-driving to ultimately deliver on our goal of delivering L4,” says Rivian Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe. “This represents an inflection point for the ownership experience – ultimately being able to give customers their time back when in the car.”
Why it matters: The move follows suit with Tesla’s big bet on autonomy, its strategy of developing its own in-house self-driving processors, and an in-house AI autonomy stack. Notably, Rivian will be pairing its ACM3 computer with LiDAR sensors, while Tesla has shifted to a camera-based sensor only for its self-driving system.
Rivian and VW are also jointly developing a next-gen software EV platform, which they recently said they plan to sell to other automakers. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Rivian attempt to license its autonomy stack to other OEMs as well, a move that Tesla has talked about doing for years.
Bottom line: The autonomy space is growing more crowded, with Google-owned Waymo, Amazon-owned Zoox, Tesla, and still others already rolling out robotaxi services. Rivian is set to join the consumer-owner side of autonomy, though it’s tough to say whether the company’s LiDAR sensor suite and in-house CPU will pay off in the long run.
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