Rivian’s electric vehicles will in future be able to run AI agents built by other companies, such as Anthropic, the carmaker’s founder and chief executive RJ Scaringe said at TechCrunch Disrupt this week. “That’s where it becomes magical,” he said on stage, TechCrunch reported on 15 October 2026.
Scaringe did not say when this will happen. Rivian declined to give more details, TechCrunch reported, and pointed instead to the “AI & Autonomy Day” event it is holding in December.
What Rivian has today
Rivian recently rolled out an AI assistant that lets drivers and passengers control the car by talking to it, according to TechCrunch. The company builds its in-car software itself, rather than relying on Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, and has written many of its own apps, such as navigation.
Rivian says it has built an in-house “agentic framework” that works out what a person wants when they speak to the vehicle and sends the request to the right part of the car’s software. Most requests are everyday ones: lowering the temperature, turning on the seat heaters or summarising the news.
Scaringe described it as a router. “Think of it as like a traffic light. So if you ask the vehicle something, it decides what model it’s going to use. It can use a local model that’s running on the edge and the vehicle. If it’s a more complex question, it can go up to the cloud. And then even for that, we have different models that we use,” he said. A model “on the edge” runs on the car’s own computer rather than in a remote data centre.
Since May, the assistant has been able to use outside apps such as Google Calendar, TechCrunch reported.
The next step: frontier AI labs
Scaringe said the next step would be to add products from the frontier AI companies, but that it will not be simple. “There’s a lot of plumbing behind the scenes we have to do to make sure that that works, and it’s not just within Rivian. That’s also a lot of coordination with the labs to make sure they enable that plumbing,” he said.
He gave an example of how it might feel to use. A driver could ask the car to turn on the ventilated seats “and then simultaneously say, ‘We were talking yesterday about this meal. I’m planning to have guests over on Friday. Can you help me think through what we’re going to make?'” The car could then draw on a conversation the driver had with an assistant on another device.
That would mean linking the car to the context that AI apps hold about their users, TechCrunch noted. Rivian has not said which AI companies it is working with beyond naming Anthropic as an example.
Agents won’t drive the car
Scaringe stressed that agents will be kept away from driving functions. Putting this kind of software near safety-critical systems means Rivian has to be extremely careful, he said. “You wouldn’t want an agent to determine, ‘hey, it’s time to apply the brakes, or time to steer the vehicle.’ So anything that’s vehicle-level controls are not being handed to an agent.”
Why it matters
TechCrunch pointed out that Rivian would not be the first US carmaker to do this: earlier this year Tesla added a feature letting users talk to SpaceX’s Grok chatbot and its Grok Bot assistant.
Scaringe’s line, with agents handling information and comfort but not vehicle-level controls, sets out where Rivian says it will draw the boundary.
What’s still unknown
Rivian has not given a launch date, named any partner deals, or said whether the feature would cost extra or need a subscription. It has also not said how users would link their AI accounts to the car or what data would be shared.
What to watch
Rivian’s AI & Autonomy Day in December is the next point where the company may give details, including timing and which AI companies are involved.
What this means
- Plans, not a product. Scaringe gave no date for third-party agents in Rivian cars.
- Driving stays off-limits. Agents will not control brakes or steering, he said.
- December is the next checkpoint. Rivian pointed to its AI & Autonomy Day for more.
Sources
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