EVwire brief: Uber and Autobrains, together with NVIDIA, are launching a robotaxi pilot in Munich.
The deal pairs Uber's ride-hailing network with Autobrains' "Agentic AI" driving stack, running on NVIDIA's DRIVE Hyperion compute and aiming for Level 4 autonomy. Pending regulatory approval, Munich would be the first deployment city.
The partners are pitching it as an "OEM-agnostic" model: driving software meant to run across many carmakers and cities, not one proprietary fleet. It's also the second Uber robotaxi partner now pointed at Munich, after the Momenta Level 4 tests already slated for the city this year.
Autobrains is a Tel Aviv company that says it holds more than 300 patents, and its pitch is architectural. Instead of leaning on one big model to handle every situation, it splits the driving task into specialized agents, each handling a specific context or decision.
That design is meant to run on standard automotive sensors and automotive-grade compute, rather than the custom vehicles and heavy sensor stacks autonomy has often required.
Autobrains founder and CEO Igal Raichelgauz put it this way:
Autonomous driving will not scale by relying on a single model to solve every driving scenario. It requires systems that can reason, adapt and make decisions under uncertainty.
NVIDIA shows off its Hyperion robotaxi partnerships
Context: On the choice of city, the companies cited Munich's role as a European automotive hub, its mix of dense urban streets and faster road networks, and Germany's regulatory framework for autonomous driving. Uber had already flagged plans to begin self-driving tests in Munich from 2026.
It's a telling pick. Munich is about the least forgiving place in Europe to prove a new driving stack. That's likely the point: if you want to sell an OEM-agnostic system to German automakers, you prove it on their home turf.
For Uber, this fits a sprawling autonomy strategy: be the marketplace and the demand engine, and let partners carry the cost and risk of building the actual driver.
The company now works with roughly two dozen AV partners across ride-hailing, delivery and freight, including Waymo, WeRide, Pony.ai, Baidu, Momenta, Wayve, Avride and Motional, all under its Uber Autonomous Solutions arm.
Europe is where that approach is now being tested. In April, Uber, Pony.ai and Verne switched on what they called Europe's first commercial robotaxi service in Zagreb, a launch we covered on the ground.
Munich is a far bigger test, and it's already crowded with AV programs, including Uber's own Momenta tests. The Bavarian capital is quietly turning into Europe's robotaxi proving ground.
One note of caution: this is an announcement, not a deployment. There's no named vehicle, no fleet size, and no firm timeline, and the whole thing depends on regulatory approval.
DIG DEEPER on the robotaxi race in the Robotaxi Report, our dedicated read on the Robotaxi industry.
