Uber plans to invest $300 million in Lucid, an electric vehicle manufacturer, as part of a robotaxi initiative expected to launch in a major U.S. city by late next year. Shares of Lucid rose over 56 percent to $3.58 in pre-market trading after the company announced a proposal for a one-for-ten reverse stock split of its Class A common stock.

Over the next six years, beginning in 2026, Uber plans to purchase and deploy more than 20,000 Lucid Gravity SUVs equipped with autonomous vehicle technology from the startup Nuro. This agreement highlights a renewed focus and effort to secure funding for self-driving taxis, following a prior wave of investment in autonomous driving that yielded a limited number of vehicles. Tesla recently initiated a robotaxi trial in Austin, while Alphabet's Waymo is accelerating its expansion efforts.

According to the joint announcement, as part of their agreement, Uber will invest hundreds of millions of dollars in both Lucid and Nuro, with $300 million specifically allocated for Lucid. This recent move by Uber reinforces its refreshed commitment to the robotaxi sector after stepping back in 2020. Since that time, Uber has shifted towards collaborations with various tech developers, including Waymo and Aurora.

The partnership with Lucid follows Uber's earlier robotaxi deal in April with Volkswagen, which plans to provide ID.Buzz vans for commercial use in Los Angeles next year. However, the path to commercializing autonomous vehicle technology has proven more challenging than expected, due to elevated costs, stringent regulations, and federal inquiries that have led several companies, including GM's Cruise, to cease operations.

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Others still pursuing the market include Amazon's Zoox, which is running tests of a robotaxi with no manual controls and aims to roll out commercial services in Las Vegas later this year. After a series of unmet commitments, Tesla recently began a limited trial with around a dozen of its Model Y SUVs in Austin, Texas, last month.

CEO Elon Musk has indicated plans to quickly expand this service to additional U.S. cities within the year. Waymo, which has been expanding cautiously, currently operates roughly 1,500 vehicles across several U.S. locations and recently surpassed 100 million miles of autonomous driving.

A prototype of the Lucid-Nuro robotaxi is already operating without a driver on a closed track at Nuro's testing facility in Las Vegas, according to the company.

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"We are expanding beyond our traditional EV technology leadership and working on partnerships and going now into areas that in the past we have not really focused on," Lucid's interim CEO Marc Winterhoff says.