The assistant, which rolled out to Rivian's own vehicles this year, could first appear in VW's low-cost ID EVERY1, a small four-door hatchback slated to be the first VW model to use Rivian's software and electrical architecture under the venture, which began in November 2024.

This is the second expansion of the tie-up. The companies initially announced a venture valued at up to $5 billion, but VW raised its commitment to up to $5.8 billion by 2027 within months. Rivian called the AI licensing "a proof point for the extensibility of the platform we've built in-house."

Rivian spent two years developing the assistant, which lets drivers and passengers control vehicle functions by voice, before it reached the R1S SUV and R1T pickup in May 2026 and the new R2 SUV in October. CEO RJ Scaringe has said the company built an in-house agentic framework that routes spoken requests to the right part of the car's software, which could eventually let Rivian vehicles run AI agents from other companies, including Anthropic.