[AutonomousVehicles] Lyft and Tensor official partnership announcement

[Cornelius Butler]

Lyft and Tensor Plan Partnership to Make World’s First Consumer-Owned
Autonomous Vehicles, Powered by NVIDIA, “Lyft-Ready”

Below is the official press release.

Article Link:
https://www.lyft.com/blog/posts/lyft-tensor-av-partnership

Article Text:
Oct 9, 2025

Collaboration to Make Tensor Robocar the First Consumer AV to Seamlessly
Deploy on Lyft, Right Off the Lot; Partnership Includes Planned Purchase of
Fleet of Tensor Vehicles for Network Expansion

Lyft, a global mobility platform, and Tensor, a pioneer in personal
autonomous vehicles, today announced a planned strategic partnership that
will revolutionize how consumers access and monetize autonomous driving
technology. Through this collaboration, Tensor's groundbreaking Robocar
will become the first personally-owned autonomous vehicle (AV) to become
"Lyft-ready" directly from the manufacturer, while Lyft, through its
affiliates, has reserved hundreds of Tensor Robocars to purchase for its
own fleet operations.

Founded in Silicon Valley in 2016, Tensor has distinguished itself as the
first company to develop a Level 4 AV designed for personal ownership. With
over nine years of AV development and California's second-ever driverless
testing permit for passenger vehicles, Tensor recently unveiled the world's
first personal Robocar — a new-generation AV built from the ground up for
private ownership.

The Tensor Robocar is powered by NVIDIA technology, not only for its
sophisticated AI onboard and unparalleled approach to safety through
high-redundant systems, but also for the large-scale training and
simulation for the Tensor Foundation Models. Since 2018, Tensor has
collaborated with NVIDIA to accelerate each generation of its autonomy
platforms with NVIDIA’s advanced technology.

Over the next few years, Tensor Robocars, equipped with an NVIDIA-powered
onboard supercomputer, will roll out L4 driving capabilities across Europe,
the Middle East, and the United States – starting with major metropolitan
areas. Lyft and Tensor plan to complete an integration that will allow for
Tensor Robocars to immediately onboard on Lyft’s platform and let owners
have instant access to monetize their vehicles in markets where
“Lyft-ready” L4 technology is available.

The planned partnership represents an important milestone in AV adoption,
creating a pathway for individual consumers to seamlessly deploy their
personal AV on a rideshare network – allowing for better utilization of
their vehicles and immediate return on their investment. The upcoming
collaboration furthers Lyft's comprehensive approach to AVs — from
technology integration and fleet management to individual ownership
opportunities — positioning the company as the leading AV platform for both
consumers and fleet operators.

"Lyft has created opportunities for millions of people to earn on the
platform, but right now, one of the last barriers to rideshare is time —
you have to physically be in your vehicle to give rides and earn," said
Jeremy Bird, Executive Vice President of Driver Experience at Lyft. "What's
exciting about Tensor is they're advancing the opportunity that Lyft
already creates, removing that final obstacle while reinforcing our vision
of a hybrid transportation future. Future owners will be able to start
earning on the Lyft network the moment their vehicle rolls off the lot,
while riders get access to some of the most advanced and luxurious AVs on
the road. This is exactly the kind of innovation that expands what's
possible in transportation."

"At Tensor, our mission of ‘Own Your Autonomy’ is about empowering you to
take control of your mobility,” said Hugo Fozzati, Chief Business Officer
at Tensor. “Through our upcoming partnership with Lyft, we’re taking a bold
step forward — expanding our premium autonomous experience to a wider
audience of Lyft passengers and enabling you to make your car work for you.
By allowing your Tensor to operate as a vehicle on the Lyft platform when
you’re not using it, you can effortlessly generate revenue. This marks a
new chapter in luxury autonomous mobility — placing control in your hands
and redefining the future of autonomous travel."

“The collaboration between Tensor and Lyft represents a bold step toward an
AI-driven transportation future, enabled by NVIDIA’s end-to-end automotive
platform,” said Rishi Dhall, Vice President of Automotive at NVIDIA. “From
large-scale training on NVIDIA DGX to in-vehicle real-time inference on
NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Thor, Tensor is building an AI system that continuously
learns and improves, setting a new benchmark for performance, safety, and
intelligence in autonomous mobility.”


Lyft Tensor Fleet Mockup Image
This “Lyft-ready” approach is more than a technical integration — it's a
fundamental shift in how people think about vehicle ownership. Traditional
car ownership means a vehicle loses value as it sits idle most of the time.
Tensor Robocars flip this model, turning personal luxury vehicles into
productive assets that can generate income around the clock. Beyond
platform access, Lyft envisions AV owners will also over time benefit from
Lyft’s fleet management subsidiary Flexdrive's comprehensive suite of
services — keeping vehicles clean, charged, and professionally maintained
to ensure they're always ready to generate revenue. This would create new
opportunities for vehicle owners to maximize their investment returns,
while establishing a framework that demonstrates how "Lyft-ready"
technology could transform vehicle economics as autonomous capabilities
become more widespread. The result is a new category of vehicle ownership
that doesn't require people to sacrifice their time or change their daily
routines.

Beyond enabling individual ownership, Lyft has reserved a fleet of hundreds
of Robocars, and plans to work through its affiliates to purchase the
vehicles for deployment across key markets in Europe and North America,
subject to regulatory approvals. This dual approach serves multiple
objectives, including accelerating the availability of state-of-the-art L4
AVs to Lyft riders and generating operational insights that will benefit
the broader "Lyft-ready" ecosystem. The Tensor Robocars will enable Lyft to
offer a differentiated premium autonomous transportation experience,
setting a new standard for comfort, privacy, and sophistication in
autonomous mobility. It is designed from the ground up for operation-light
Level 4 autonomy with self-reliant capabilities including autonomous sensor
cleaning, parking, charging, and maintenance. For Lyft, such technology is
attractive as it has the potential to minimize downtime and grow
revenue-generating commercial deployment hours.

The World’s Fastest Supercomputer in Vehicles, Powered by NVIDIA
Engineered for unmatched safety, privacy, and autonomy, the Tensor Robocar
features L4 autonomous technology with over 100 cutting-edge sensors
(including 37 cameras, 5 lidars, 11 radars) with an agentic AI
architecture. It streams and processes over 53 gigabits of sensor data per
second — roughly 1,000 times faster than typical home internet — all within
a single Robocar, delivering the speed and intelligence needed to perceive
and respond to the world in real time. To reason over such a huge amount of
sensor inputs into the large AI models, Tensor has the world’s most
powerful automotive supercomputer, with over 8,000 TOPS of GPU computing
capability. Equipped with eight NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Thor SoCs based on the
cutting-edge Blackwell GPU architecture, this in-vehicle supercomputer sets
a new benchmark for the industry.

Tensor Foundation Model Trains on NVIDIA DGX Platform
Tensor’s foundation model for autonomous driving is entirely data-driven,
learning every aspect of driving — including perception, prediction, and
planning — from vast amounts of real-world and simulated data. NVIDIA’s AI
architecture for training and in-vehicle inference enables Tensor’s
complete development pipeline of embodied AI systems, from training,
validation, to deployment.

Its transformer-based AI models with a Mixture of Experts (MoE)
architecture are trained on data collected by expert drivers to capture
ideal driving behavior with advanced imitation learning, as well as large
vision language models to help navigate unexpected “corner cases,” all
powered by NVIDIA DGX platform. Large-scale simulations powered by NVIDIA
GPUs are deployed for training and validation with advanced world models,
supporting rigorous safety evaluation before vehicles hit the road.

Tensor’s Robocars are scheduled for delivery by the end of 2026, launching
in select global markets across the U.S., Europe, and the UAE. In select
markets where the Lyft app and Tensor’s L4 capabilities are available,
vehicles will be “Lyft-ready” via the integrated software in the vehicle.
Lyft is preparing the necessary infrastructure and technology, with the
goal to launch the first “Lyft-ready” market in 2027.

Whether it’s an everyday commute or a journey that changes everything, Lyft
is driven by our purpose: to serve and connect. Founded in 2012, Lyft has
grown into a global mobility platform offering a mix of rideshare, taxis,
private hire vehicles, car sharing, bikes, and scooters across 4 continents
and nearly 1,000 cities. Millions of drivers have chosen to earn on
billions of rides - helping to create a more connected world, with
transportation options for everyone.

Tensor is an American AI company dedicated to building agentic products
that empower individual consumers. Our flagship product, the Tensor
Robocar, is the world's first personal Robocar and the first AI agentic
vehicle—fully autonomous, automotive-grade, and built for private ownership
at scale. Founded in 2016 in Silicon Valley, Tensor is headquartered in San
Jose, California, with offices in Barcelona, Singapore, and Dubai. Tensor
obtained its first self-driving test permit in Feb 2017 in California and
started testing on public roads in California. In 2019, Tensor obtained
California‘s second CPUC test permit for testing RoboTaxi for the general
public. In 2020, Tensor obtained California's second driverless permit for
passenger vehicles.

Flexdrive, Lyft’s fleet management subsidiary, leverages proprietary
software built specifically for high-mileage rideshare fleet operations,
with real-time vehicle tracking, proactive maintenance alerts, geofencing
technology for rapid service response, and intelligent charge management to
minimize downtime. With over eight years managing 15,000 vehicles across
dozens of North American locations, Flexdrive brings unique vertically
integrated expertise enabled by deep technical investment in
rideshare-focused fleet management software.

Certain statements contained in this announcement are “forward-looking
statements” about Lyft within the meaning of the securities laws, including
statements about Lyft’s autonomous vehicle strategy and planned partnership
with Tensor and related plans, expectations, technologies, benefits for
vehicle owners and riders and purchase of Tensor vehicles by Lyft through
its affiliates. Such statements, which are not of historical fact, involve
estimates, assumptions, judgments and uncertainties. There are a number of
factors that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially
from those addressed in the forward-looking statements. Such factors are
detailed in Lyft’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Lyft does not undertake an obligation to update its forward-looking
statements to reflect future events, except as required by applicable law.
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