Uber on Thursday announced a partnership to deploy more than 20,000 robotaxis over the next six years as demand for driverless cars kicks into high gear.

As part of the partnership, the ride-hailing company is teaming up with Lucid, the electric vehicle maker, and Nuro, an autonomous vehicle startup. Under the agreement, Uber will invest $300 million in Lucid. Nuro will develop the self-driving technology that Lucid will use to supply Uber with robotaxis over the course of the deal and receive a multi-hundred-million-dollar investment.

Lucid stock popped 30% Thursday. Uber shares were marginally higher.

The companies plan to launch the robotaxis in a major U.S. urban hub next year.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Nuro and Lucid on this new robotaxi program, purpose-built just for the Uber platform, to safely bring the magic of autonomous driving to more people across the world,” said Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in a statement.

In an interview with CNBC, Lucid interim CEO Marc Winterhoff called the partnership an opportunity for the EV maker to compete in a “completely new” addressable market it has yet to penetrate.

Nuro, which is backed by Google and the SoftBank Vision Fund, will provide “level 4 self-driving system” software for the cars. The technology can drive passengers under normal traffic and weather conditions without a human behind the wheel.

The partnership with Lucid and Nuro follows Uber’s alliance with Alphabet-backed Waymo. The two companies expanded their service to Atlanta and Austin, Texas, earlier this year.

Waymo’s vehicles are also considered Level 4, as defined by SAE Levels of Driving Automation. Tesla sells cars today equipped with Autopilot and FSD Supervised systems that fall into the level 2 category, requiring a human at the wheel. Elon Musk‘s EV company debuted a robotaxi pilot test in Austin in June.

Lucid said the 450-mile range for its Gravity vehicles should help cut costs and charge times while improving accessibility. Winterhoff said the program may eventually include future Lucid vehicles currently in development.

“We’ve been chosen because of our EV technology leadership,” he said.

Testing for the first prototype vehicle is underway on a closed circuit at Nuro’s Las Vegas-based proving grounds. In April, the startup raised $106 million in a funding round from T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Tiger Global and Greylock.

The deal is a “blueprint for a robotaxi program that’s both commercially viable and globally scalable,” Nuro said in a statement to CNBC.

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The value of cryptocurrencies stolen by criminals surged in the first six months of 2025 after a high-profile hack and a wave of physical attacks targeting crypto holders and their relatives.

So far this year, $2.17 billion has been stolen from crypto services — already eclipsing the $1.87 billion of funds stolen from platforms in 2024 — and this is expected to reach $4 billion by the end of 2025, according to a report published Thursday by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.

Overall, the combined value of digital tokens stolen from both crypto platforms and individuals hit more than $2.8 billion and is already approaching the $3.4 billion in crypto stolen last year.

The bulk of the funds stolen from services came from February’s cyberattack on Dubai crypto exchange Bybit, which saw North Korea-linked hackers make off with $1.5 billion. It’s estimated to be the largest crypto heist in history.

However, the rise in stolen crypto assets was also driven by a spike in attacks on individual crypto wallets. Personal wallets accounted for over 23% of total thefts, with attackers increasingly turning to physical violence and coercion to access funds, Chainalysis said.

In January, David Balland, a co-founder of crypto wallet firm Ledger, was kidnapped with his wife from their home in central France. Before they were freed, the attackers cut off Balland’s finger and sent footage of it to his fellow co-founder Eric Larcheveque demanding ransom money.

Separately, in May, the father of a crypto entrepreneur was taken in broad daylight by four men wearing ski masks. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of several million euros and cut off one of the man’s fingers. He was freed by police days later.

Eric Jardine, cybercrimes research lead at Chainalysis, told CNBC that the rise in crypto-related thefts was primarily being driven by increasing crypto adoption and price appreciation.

“Adoption means there are more services and users in the crypto ecosystem, making thefts more common. Price appreciation means that services and individuals in crypto have more USD value to lose, even if the total assets stolen are relatively constant over time,” Jardine said via email.

Jardine suggested that the uptick in attacks on individual crypto holders could relate to the fact that crypto trading services are beefing up their security.

“If services become better at security, malicious actors will potentially move to targeting individual wallet holders and trade off a single large-scale heist in favor of a large number of smaller-scale victimizations,” he said.

Meanwhile, rising wealth accumulated through holdings of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin has resulted in a rise in crypto influencers flaunting their lifestyle on social media platforms.

Jardine stressed it was important not to blame the victims of physical crypto-related attacks, adding that “showy displays of wealth can quite obviously attract the attention of a bad actor when compared to a more modest outward facing lifestyle.”

DeFi Development, a company vying to be the MicroStrategy of Solana, is expanding internationally through a franchise model.

The company plans to partner with others looking to operate their own Solana treasuries with DeFi’s support. In return, DeFi Development will retain an equity stake in each regional vehicle. The initiative will be branded DFDV Treasury Accelerator.

“Most crypto treasury vehicles today are following the MicroStrategy model. What excites us about DFDV is that they’re not just copying the playbook. They’re evolving it,” said Cosmo Jiang, general partner at investor Pantera Capital. “By combining validator infrastructure, capital markets innovation, and now international expansion via a global franchising model, DFDV is building something structurally different and ahead of the curve.”

Pantera was also an anchor investor in Bitmine Immersion Technologies, an ether treasury firm backed by Peter Thiel and chaired by Fundstrat’s Tom Lee. Kraken, Arrington, RK Capital and Borderless Capital may also support the franchise initiative through a potential investment and treasury and fundraising guidance, as well as infrastructure – which could include validator and custody solutions.

The move comes amid an explosion in companies pursuing crypto treasury strategies or merging with public entities to be able to emulate MicroStrategy’s success investing in bitcoin. In addition to Bitmine, the publicly listed betting platform SharpLink Gaming in May initiated an ether treasury strategy and appointed Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin as chairman of its board. Bit Digital recently exited bitcoin mining to focus on its ETH treasury and staking plans.

Solana is a five-year-old public blockchain platform that promises to provide fast transaction speeds as well as low fees for developers and users. Solana’s value is up 7% over the past year, with a nearly 10% gain within the past month, according to Coin Metrics.

In addition to accumulating Solana tokens, the company will acquire validators (the computers that help run the Solana network by verifying transactions) that can be used to “stake” the tokens. Through staking, users earn rewards for locking up SOL tokens on the network.

DeFi Development this week introduced its first SOL per share guidance, saying it plans to reach 1 SOL per share by 2028. With 857,749 SOL held currently and 18.8 million shares outstanding, its SOL per share stands at 0.0457, it said.