Uber is building an autonomous vehicle empire, and here’s every company it’s using to do it

Uber has partnered with — and in some cases made direct investments in — more than 30 autonomous vehicle companies over the past two years. And it’s taking a global approach. Here, TechCrunch tracks every one of those moves in one place. But first, a bit of history. Uber was, at one time, developing and testing its own autonomous vehicle (AV) technology. The company, then led by Travis Kalanick, created Uber Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) in 2014 and recruited dozens of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics program. Two years later, Uber acquired Otto, a self-driving truck company founded by former Google self-driving engineer Anthony Levandowski, Lior Ron, Don Burnette (who has since gone on to found Kodiak AI), and Claire Delaunay. Uber also began testing its AVs on public streets in 2016 across California, Pittsburgh, and Arizona. All of that progress unraveled across three defining moments: Waymo’s trade secrets lawsuit against Uber, the resignation of Kalanick in 2017, and a fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona, in 2018 involving its self-driving Volvo XC90, which struck and killed a pedestrian. (The vehicle was in autonomous mode, and a human safety operator behind the wheel at the time wasn’t paying attention.) Uber…