Rivian plans to let AI agents from Anthropic and others run in its EVs

Rivian’s cars already have a voice assistant. Next, the company wants them to host AI agents built by other companies. Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt that future Rivians will be able to run agents from labs such as Anthropic, TechCrunch reports. “That’s where it becomes magical,” he said.

How Rivian’s assistant works today

Rivian writes its own infotainment software instead of relying on Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. It has built an in-house agentic framework that works out what the driver wants and routes the request to the right part of the car. Scaringe compared it to a traffic light: simple requests can be handled by a local model running in the vehicle, while harder questions go to the cloud, where Rivian uses several different models.

Typical tasks are what you would expect: lowering the temperature, turning on seat heaters or summarising the news. Since May, the agent has also been able to reach external apps such as Google Calendar.

What third-party agents would add

The next step is connecting assistants from the big AI companies, along with the personal context they already hold. Scaringe’s example: ask the car to switch on the ventilated seats, then continue a conversation from the day before about what to cook for guests on Friday, picking up context from another device.

He admitted it is hard work. There is “a lot of plumbing behind the scenes”, he said, including coordination with the AI labs themselves.

Safety limits

Scaringe was clear that agents will be kept away from driving functions: “anything that’s vehicle-level controls are not being handed to an agent.” In other words, no AI deciding when to brake or steer.

When?

Rivian gave no date and declined to share more. It points instead to its AI & Autonomy Day in December, where more details are expected. Rivian would not be the first carmaker to do this: TechCrunch notes that Tesla added chatbot features to its cars earlier this year.