Rivian Plans to Bring Third-Party AI Agents to Its Cars

Rivian plans to let its vehicles run AI agents from other companies, including frontier AI labs, founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said at TechCrunch Disrupt. He did not give a timeline, and Rivian declined to share more details, pointing to its “AI & Autonomy Day” event in December.

Rivian recently introduced an AI assistant that lets drivers and passengers speak to the vehicle. The company says its in-house agent framework interprets requests and routes them to the appropriate part of the car’s software. It can handle tasks such as adjusting the temperature, turning on seat warmers or summarizing news. Depending on the request, the system can use a model running locally in the vehicle or one in the cloud.

As of May this year, the agent could access external apps such as Google Calendar. Scaringe said Rivian’s next step is to add products from frontier AI companies, but doing so will require technical work and coordination with those companies. He also stressed that agents will not control vehicle functions such as braking or steering, which are safety-critical.

Scaringe described a possible use in which a driver asks the assistant to turn on ventilated seats and then draws on context from a conversation on another device to plan a meal for Friday guests. Rivian built its own in-car software rather than relying on Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, though it has integrated apps such as Apple Music. Tesla added access to SpaceX’s Grok chatbot and its Grok Bot assistant earlier this year.