Rivian acquires UK AI startup Third Dimension for self-driving — TechCrunch

Electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian has acquired UK startup Third Dimension, which uses artificial intelligence to transform images and videos into realistic three-dimensional worlds. The technology is planned for use in accelerating the development of driver-assistance systems and an autonomous driving system for robotaxis that Rivian plans to supply to Uber. This was reported by TechCrunch.

Team to join AI division

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Third Dimension's team consists of 15 people, most of whom work in the United Kingdom. It will join Rivian's autonomous driving and artificial intelligence team led by James Philbin. The acquisition could also help Rivian expand its London AI hub.

Third Dimension was founded in 2024 by CEO Tolga Kart and Piotr Sokolski. The company raised $7 million in seed funding from Abstract Ventures, MVP, Soma Capital, and Solari Capital. Its technology was initially developed to speed up video game development, though the founders also considered applications in defense and autonomous transportation.

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Simulation of road situations

Simulators are an important tool for training and testing autonomous driving systems. Previously, such environments were often created using graphics or game engines and synthetic data. Third Dimension's technology uses AI to recreate the physical world and, combined with Rivian's data sets, could become a basis for modeling road scenarios.

Rivian collects aggregated and anonymized trip data from tens of thousands of R1S vehicles, delivery vans, and R2 SUVs, provided owners have allowed data transmission from external cameras. According to Philbin, the company receives more than 400,000 data sequences daily from customers' vehicles. Third Dimension's technology is intended to enable the modeling of complex road conditions without waiting for rare situations to occur on real roads.