Electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian has purchased Third Dimension, a United Kingdom-based startup that converts images and videos into realistic 3D environments using artificial intelligence, according to TechCrunch. The acquisition will help Rivian advance its driver-assistance features and develop the autonomous driving system for robotaxis it's contracted to deliver to Uber by 2028. Financial terms weren't revealed, but the 15-person team—mostly located in the U.K.—will join Rivian's autonomy and AI division under James Philbin's leadership.
Third Dimension was established in 2024 by CEO Tolga Kart and Piotr Sokólski, securing $7 million in seed investment from Abstract Ventures, MVP, Soma Capital, and Solari Capital, the report states. While the technology was originally designed to accelerate video game creation, its founders identified other uses including defense and self-driving vehicles. Rivian currently operates a "Universal Hands-Free" system that permits drivers to release the steering wheel on highways while maintaining visual attention, and plans to launch software by year's end that handles complete journeys across surface streets and highways without wheel contact, though supervision remains mandatory. The company collects driving information from tens of thousands of R1T pickups, R1S SUVs, delivery vans, and R2 SUVs currently operating—specifically from vehicles whose owners have activated external camera sharing—receiving more than 400,000 sequences uploaded daily from its customer fleets.
"For us, it's about taking real scenarios, but making them simulatable," Philbin said in an exclusive interview. "These are not synthetic kind of video game styles, they're real things that happen in the world, but now we get that extra dial of being able to move the cameras around, shift other agents, have maybe different lighting or weather conditions." According to Kart, the team is enthusiastic about concentrating on a single challenge, noting that serving multiple clients as a small company proved difficult. Philbin revealed the company conducted an extensive review of numerous providers before selecting Third Dimension, recognizing it as technology Rivian knew it needed.
Simulation serves as an essential tool for autonomous vehicle developers who rely on it to train and validate self-driving systems, the report explains. Traditional simulators were constructed on rendering or video game engines and frequently depended on synthetic data, creating virtual environments that superficially resembled reality but maintained a quality gap. The typical solution involved supplying simulators with increasingly massive data volumes hoping to narrow that gap. Third Dimension's approach uses AI to replicate the physical world, which when merged with Rivian's extensive data could produce a powerful simulator. The technology enables Rivian to simulate intricate driving conditions without waiting for uncommon real-world edge cases to naturally occur, which becomes particularly critical for validation when determining whether a system is ready to ship.
Rivian's robotaxi versions of its R2 SUV will become available through the Uber app in 2028, requiring full autonomy capabilities that Third Dimension's technology will help develop. The acquisition also positions Rivian to expand its AI hub in London, Philbin noted. Real-world data gathered from cameras and other sensors carries exceptional value, and Rivian aggregates and anonymizes this information to construct training models for driving. The company's ability to transform actual driving scenarios into simulatable environments with adjustable parameters—different camera angles, agent movements, lighting, or weather—provides a tool for testing how systems will genuinely perform before deployment. As automakers race toward full autonomy, the distinction between simulation quality and real-world accuracy could determine which companies ship safe, reliable self-driving systems first. The challenge isn't just collecting mountains of data—it's ensuring that virtual testing environments faithfully predict how software behaves when human lives depend on it.