On Thursday, shares of Lucid Group (LCID +6.32%), a Silicon Valley-based electric vehicle (EV) maker, soared more than 36% following the announcement of a premium robotaxi service deal with ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies (UBER 2.11%).
My first thought upon seeing the news was "Yet another deal that will benefit Nvidia (NVDA +2.33%)!" The artificial intelligence (AI) tech leader wasn't mentioned in the press release, but I knew of the Nvidia connection.
First, let's look at the Lucid-Uber deal and then see how Nvidia is poised to benefit.
Image source: Nvidia.
The Uber-Lucid-Nuro partnership
The deal involves Uber procuring Lucid Gravity SUVs equipped with Nuro Driver, a Level 4 self-driving system, to use in a global premium robotaxi service developed exclusively for the Uber ride-hailing platform. Moreover, Uber plans to make "multi-hundred-million-dollar investments" in both Lucid and Nuro, an autonomous driving technology start-up also based in Silicon Valley.
More specifically, Uber "aims to deploy 20,000 or more Lucid vehicles equipped with the Nuro Driver over six years in dozens of markets around the world." Its first launch will be in a major U.S. city and is expected to occur later next year. The first robotaxi prototype is already operating autonomously on Nuro's closed-course testing facility in Las Vegas.
Nuro is a venture-backed start-up, which in April raised $106 million in a Series E funding round, bringing its valuation to $6 billion. Last year, the company shifted its main focus from developing delivery robots to licensing autonomous driving technology.
Of course, this deal is great news for Lucid and Nuro, especially given the big injection of cash they'll receive from Uber. Lucid's vehicles -- the Air sedan and the new Gravity SUV – get high marks for performance and comfort, and sport industry-leading ranges. But it's notoriously difficult for vehicle start-ups to succeed because automakers have extremely high fixed-costs, so liquidity is always a big concern.
At the end of the first quarter of 2025, Lucid had cash and short-term investments of $3.61 billion, and its free cash flow for the quarter was negative $589.9 million, which equates to an annual cash-burn rate of $2.36 billion. At its current cash-burn rate, Lucid's cash and short-term investments would last about 1.5 years.
NASDAQ: NVDA
Key Data Points
Why Nvidia is poised to benefit from the Uber-Lucid-Nuro robotaxi deal
Uber, Lucid, and Nuro all have some type of driverless vehicle-related partnership with Nvidia, which isn't surprising as along with enabling the overall AI revolution, Nvidia's AI tech is a major enabler of the AI-powered driverless vehicle revolution. But it's the Nuro-Nvidia partnership that's relevant to Nvidia benefiting from the Uber-Lucid-Nuro robotaxi deal.
Lucid EVs will be equipped with the Nuro Driver Level 4 autonomy system, according to the deal's press release. Nuro is using Nvidia's AI tech to power this system, as it announced at Nvidia's annual GTC (GPU Technology Conference) in March 2024.
More specifically, the "Nuro Driver is built on NVIDIA's end-to-end safety architecture, which includes NVIDIA GPUs [graphics processing units] for AI training in the cloud and an automotive-grade NVIDIA DRIVE Thor computer running the NVIDIA DriveOS operating system inside the vehicle," according to an Nvidia blog. In other words, Nuro is using Nvidia's AI tech for both AI training of its self-driving vehicle system and AI inferencing, since Nvidia's DRIVE Thor, a supercomputer, is the "brains" inside the vehicle.
So, not only does Nuro use Nvidia's data center AI products, which are available via all of the major cloud computing services, but the icing on top is that it must buy an Nvidia DRIVE Thor supercomputer for each vehicle that it equips with its Nuro Driver system. So, it seems safe to assume that every Lucid vehicle that Uber acquires for its new robotaxi service will have an Nvidia DRIVE Thor supercomputer inside it. That Uber and Lucid also have various individual partnerships with Nvidia provides further support for this assumption.
For some context, Tesla (TSLA +2.71%) uses Nvidia's AI tech for training its self-driving vehicle system, called FSD (Supervised), with FSD standing for full self-driving. However, it does not use an Nvidia DRIVE system inside its vehicles. Tesla uses its internally developed tech -- or "AI chip" -- inside its vehicles.
Last month, Tesla had a limited launch of its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. The Uber-Lucid-Nuro robotaxi service is poised to compete with services operated by Tesla and Alphabet's Waymo, which is currently the leader in the U.S. robotaxi space.
Given Uber's ride-hailing service scale and considerable financial resources (since last year, its trailing-12-month free cash flow has exceeded that of Tesla), the newly planned premium robotaxi service could be a big winner. And the more successful the new Uber-Lucid-Nuro robotaxi service is, the more money Nvidia should make.
