Uber wants to turn its millions of drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

Uber's CTO revealed plans to eventually equip its millions of human drivers' vehicles with sensors to collect real-world data for autonomous vehicle companies and AI model training. Currently, the AV Labs program operates a small dedicated fleet, but the long-term vision is to turn Uber's global driver network into a massive data-collection grid. Uber is building an 'AV cloud' — a labeled sensor data library that its 25 AV partners can query for model training and run in shadow mode against real trips. The company frames this as democratizing AV data, positioning itself as the data infrastructure layer for the entire AV ecosystem rather than competing directly in self-driving development.