Rivian is building its own AI assistant

Rivian has spent nearly two years building its own AI assistant, an effort that remains separate from its multibillion-dollar technology joint venture with Volkswagen, TechCrunch has learned.

Rivian hasn’t revealed when it will put the AI ​​assistant in consumers’ hands. However, in an interview earlier this year, Rivian’s head of software, Waseem Bin Saeed, told TechCrunch that the company is targeting the end of the year. The company will likely share more during its upcoming release Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy Daywhich will be broadcast live starting at 9 a.m. PT on December 11.

Rivian’s plans reflect a moment in which the pace of development from foundational AI companies — tech giants and startups like Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI that are building core models and infrastructure — is accelerating and industries are scrambling to keep up.

But as Ben Said pointed out to TechCrunch earlier this year, this isn’t a hasty effort to stay in the right direction. It’s also not just a chatbot thrown into the infotainment system. Bin Saeed said that the company has allocated a great deal of thought, resources and time into the product, noting that it is designed to be integrated with all vehicle controls.

The company started with a core philosophy of building an end-to-end architecture that is model- and platform-agnostic, according to Bensaid. The Rivian AI associate team, based in the company’s Palo Alto office, quickly realized that effort and attention should also be directed toward developing the software layers that help coordinate different workflows as well as the control logic that resolves conflicts.

“And this is the basic system inside the car that we built,” Bin Saeed said. “We use what the industry now likes to call an agent framework; but we thought about this architecture very early on so that we could interact with different models.”

The in-house AI assistant program aligns with Rivian’s push to become more vertically integrated. In 2024, Rivian It overhauled its flagship R1T truck and R1S SUVchanging everything from the battery pack and suspension system to the electrical architecture, sensor suite, and software user interface.

The company has also devoted significant resources to developing and improving its software suite, which includes everything related to the real-time operating systems (RTOS) that manage the car, such as thermodynamics, the driver assistance system and safety systems, in addition to another layer related to the infotainment system.

Bin Saeed did not provide detailed information about the AI ​​assistant, but said that it includes a mixture of models that deal with specific tasks. The result is a hybrid software stack that combines edge AI, where tasks are handled on-device, and cloud AI, where larger models that require more compute are handled by remote servers.

This means a flexible, dedicated AI assistant that divides the workload between the edge and the cloud.

Rivian develops much of its AI software stack in-house, including its own custom models and the “orchestration layer,” the connector or traffic cop that ensures different AI models work together. Rivian has tapped other companies for specific AI functions.

Bin Saeed said that the mission is to develop an artificial intelligence assistant that increases customer confidence and engagement.

For now, the AI ​​assistant remains within Rivian. The company’s joint venture with Volkswagen focuses on software, but not on an AI assistant or anything related to automated driving.

The joint technology project with Volkswagen, which was announced in 2024 and is now With a value of up to $5.8 billionIt revolves around the basic electrical infrastructure, zoning calculations and infotainment system. The joint venture was officially launched in November 2024 and is expected to supply electrical architecture and software for the Volkswagen Group as early as 2027.

Bin Saeed said that autonomy and artificial intelligence are separate at the moment, but “this does not mean that it may not be so in the future.”