Friday, March 20, 2026

After pulling the plug on its own robotaxis, Uber is building a fleet with Rivian

Good morning. Get ready to hear a lot more about Jeff Bezos in the days, weeks, and probably months, ahead. The Amazon cofounder stepped down as CEO nearly five years ago, but he thrust himself back into the collective consciousness in a big way on Thursday with his plan to raise a $100 billion fund.

The number itself is huge. The last time something like this happened, when Masayoshi Son launched SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund, it created its own weather pattern in the business press. This time, the effects will be felt well beyond the business pages. Bezos wants the money (which he’s apparently been traveling everywhere from the Middle East to Singapore to raise) so that he can acquire manufacturing companies and, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, “use AI technology to accelerate their path to automation.”

The optics of one of the richest people on the planet using his post-Amazon years, not to sip daiquiris on a private island, but rather to go on the hunt for factories where AI can replace blue-collar workers, are … not so great. Maybe Bezos will demonstrate how manufacturing can be reinvented for the new era in a way that’s additive and that increases prosperity for everyone. But to judge by the swift reaction to the news on Thursday, Bezos does not enjoy the benefit of the doubt among a significant segment of the public. “Oligarchs are waging all out war against workers. FIGHT BACK,” tweeted Bernie Sanders. That was one of the nicer tweets. It’s eight months until the mid-terms, and I have a feeling that Bezos just made himself a campaign issue.

Alexei Oreskovic
@lexnfx
alexei.oreskovic@fortune.com

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Uber makes a U-turn on self-driving cars

After six years on the sidelines, Uber is making a clear push to deploy its own robotaxis again in a deal with Rivian (and an earlier deal with Lucid Motors).

The ride hailing company said Thursday that it plans to purchase 10,000 fully autonomous R2‑based robotaxis from Rivian, with an option to scale to 50,000. Uber is also making a $300 million investment in Rivian, and potentially another $950 million more should Rivian meet certain, undisclosed development requirements.

Uber is planning to deploy the new fleet in San Francisco and Miami in 2028, and hopes to be in 25 cities by 2031—though there’s still a lot that needs to happen. Rivian has yet to finish developing its R2 autonomy platform—a multi-modal sensor suite with 11 cameras, five radars, and one LiDAR that is built on two of Rivian’s in-house RAP1 chips.

It’s a significant reversal from a few years ago, when Uber sold its self‑driving unit, ATG, after a fatal crash in 2018 and years of heavy losses. Since then, Uber has gone a different path—inking deals with nearly every major robotaxi player in the market, from Waymo to WeRide. It’s unclear whether the new arrangements are having any kind of impact on those partnerships—and if companies like Waymo will start viewing Uber as more of a rival.—Jessica Mathews

OpenAI consolidates products into 'superapp'

After three years of charging full speed ahead, AI companies are on a mission to pare back AI sprawl.

Microsoft merged its various Copilot assistant groups together earlier this week. And OpenAI, which urged employees to cut back on "side quests" last week, is now consolidating various products into one desktop "superapp," according to media reports.

OpenAI will unify its ChatGPT app, its Codex coding app, and its web browser into one app for desktop PCs. The mobile version of ChatGPT will be unchanged.

“We realized we were spreading our efforts across too many apps and stacks, and that we need to simplify our efforts,” OpenAI applications chief Fidji Simo told employees Thursday in an internal memo, according to the Wall Street Journal. “That fragmentation has been slowing us down and making it harder to hit the quality bar we want.”—AO

Meta bets on AI for content moderation

Meta is cutting back on its use of outside content moderation contractors, the company announced Thursday, leaning instead on AI systems to detect and remove posts that violate its rules. The social media giant has long paid third-party firms—including Accenture—to manually review posts on Facebook and Instagram, work that has exposed human reviewers to some of the internet's most disturbing content.

Meta recently began testing moderation tools built on large language models and says the systems outperform its existing methods at catching scams, celebrity impersonators, and adult sexual solicitation. It now plans to deploy those tools more broadly across its apps. The transition will take a "few years," the company said.

Meta said human reviews will still continue handling high-stakes decisions like account disablement appeals and law enforcement referrals, and that it will rely more on in-house experts than outside vendors going forward.—Beatrice Nolan