Rivian Automotive announced Thursday that it has developed its first in-house chip to power next-generation self-driving technology in its electric vehicles (EVs).
The company’s new in-house chip, called the Rivian Autonomy Processor, will improve the ability of Rivian vehicles to process data needed for more advanced levels of autonomous driving – such as data from cameras, LIDAR and other sensors.
The custom AI chip will power Rivian’s autonomy platform, which will also be informed by an end-to-end data loop to train its AI-powered self-driving software. The company aims to reach Level 4 (L4) autonomy, which allows a vehicle to operate without human input in certain situations. 
“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,” said 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.”
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Rivian created a Large Driving Model (LDM), to serve as a foundational training model for autonomous vehicles like a large language model (LLM) is to chatbots and other AI platforms. The LDM will take those large datasets to develop autonomous driving strategies.
Software upgrades for Rivian’s second-generation R1 vehicles are expected to be released in the near future, including the incorporation of Universal Hands-Free (UHF), which will allow hands-free assisted driving to occur for extended periods of time at significantly more places.
UHF will be available on over 3.5 million miles of roads in the U.S. and Canada, and is also capable of operating off-highway on roads with clearly painted lines.
The automaker also announced the creation of Autonomy+, which is a subscription for Rivian’s autonomous services that will be expanded continuously as the technology advances.
Autonomy+ will launch in early 2026 and be priced at $2,500 for a one-time purchase, or $49.99 per month.
“These features have the potential to make the roads safer, address customer demand and become veritable drivers for the business,” Rivian said in its announcement.
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Rivian’s Autonomy+ platform is priced significantly lower than Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system, which costs $8,000 to purchase outright or $99 per month as a subscription.
The company’s announcement also included plans to make continuous improvements to the autonomy capabilities of its second-generation R1 and future R2 vehicles, which included a trajectory for point-to-point autonomous driving and eyes off functionality next year, as well as attaining personal L4 autonomy.
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Reuters contributed to this report.
