Electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian has acquired UK startup Third Dimension. Founded by veterans from the gaming and autonomous vehicle industries, the company uses artificial intelligence to convert images and videos into realistic 3D worlds.
Rivian is not entering the gaming industry, but it aims to leverage Third Dimension’s technology to convert real-world data into 3D environments, accelerating the development of its advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous taxi systems for Uber.
The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Third Dimension, which has 15 employees, most of whom are based in the UK, will be integrated into Rivian’s autonomous driving and AI team led by James Philbin. Philbin stated in an exclusive interview that this acquisition also gives Rivian the opportunity to expand its AI center in London.
Third Dimension was founded in 2024 by CEO Tolga Kart and Piotr Sokolski and raised $7 million in seed funding from venture capital firms including Abstract Ventures, MVP, Soma Capital, and Solari Capital. Although the company’s technology was initially developed to accelerate video game development, the founders identified other potential applications, including defense and autonomous vehicles.
Now, under Rivian, they will focus on autonomous driving.
“It’s exciting for the team to be able to focus on one problem,” Kart told TechCrunch in an interview. “I think it’s very challenging for a small company to have to serve so many different needs at once, so we’re thrilled to be tackling an issue of this scale, where our technology can truly make an impact.”
Simulation is a crucial tool for autonomous vehicle developers, who use it to train and validate autonomous systems. Historically, these simulators have been built on rendering or game engines and often rely on synthetic data. Kart says that while these virtual environments may resemble the real world, a gap still remains between them. The common solution has been to feed simulators ever more data, hoping to close this quality gap.
Third Dimension's technology, when combined with Rivian's vast data, could become a valuable simulator by using AI to match the physical world.
Rivian collects driving data from tens of thousands of R1T pickup trucks, R1S SUVs, delivery vans, and R2 SUVs on the road—essentially any vehicle whose owner has enabled the external camera sharing feature. Rivian uses these aggregated and anonymized data to build driving training models. Philbin stated that Rivian uploads over 400,000 data sequences daily from its customer fleet.
Philbin said that Third Dimension’s technology will enable Rivian to simulate complex driving conditions without having to wait for rare real-world extreme scenarios to occur.
This article is still being updated and will be supplemented later.