Rivian to open new site in London for autonomous driving and AI
In London, Rivian wants to attract top talent in artificial intelligence to complement its growing team in Palo Alto, California. James Philbin, Vice President, Autonomy & AI at Rivian, said: We’re incredibly excited about opening our AI hub in London and attracting leading talent. Our connected vehicles improve over time through over-the-air updates – and the work the team will do in the UK will accelerate our plans and ensure our vehicles remain one of the most technologically advanced and appealing on the road.”
However, Rivian does not yet offer true autonomous driving. While the company already refers to its Rivian Autonomy Platform, this so far only enables partial automation at Level 2, meaning hands-free driving with eyes on the road on motorways, with the driver ready to take back control at any time. Looking ahead, Rivian also wants to offer Level 3, i.e. high automation, where the driver can temporarily turn away from the driving task and traffic but must be able to take over again at short notice when prompted by the system. Mercedes, for example, already offers this for the EQS on German motorways, though the system’s maximum speed is currently limited to 95 kph.
To literally take its platform to the next level, Rivian plans to further develop the system with multimodal sensing and neural data processing. This will make it even more powerful and meet growing customer demand for trustworthy and time-saving autonomous driving features.
Rivian has also developed its second-generation vehicles with an AI-centred approach. As the fleet of second-generation vehicles rapidly grows, the data collected enables a significant acceleration in technology development. Rivian believes the combined strength of its perception platform and in-vehicle data infrastructure will allow it to build a large driving model that delivers an unprecedented understanding of complex driving situations and accelerates the path to safer and more capable autonomous functions.
Rivian is an important partner of Amazon and Volkswagen. For Amazon, long its largest shareholder, Rivian developed a dedicated electric delivery van, which it only recently started selling to other customers. Volkswagen, meanwhile, invested in Rivian last year and set up a joint venture with the Californians for vehicle software and electronic architecture. As part of an already agreed investment of one billion US dollars in June 2025, VW increased its stake in Rivian to 12.3 per cent, according to its new half-year report. This puts VW’s stake on a par with Amazon’s holding in Rivian.
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