Lyft, the San Francisco-based ride-sharing giant, has announced plans to roll out a robotaxi service in Dallas “as soon as 2026.”

Lyft CEO David Risher made the announcement Monday with a post on X, saying the robotaxi service will be a collaboration with two other companies—Japan-based Marubeni, a leading auto and fleet financing company which will provide the cars, and Israel-based Mobileye, whose autonomous driving tech will power the driverless operations on Dallas roadways.

“As soon as 2026, Marubeni-owned cars w/ Mobileye AV tech will launch in @CityOfDallas on the Lyft platform, w/ thousands more AVs/other cities to follow,” Risher wrote on X. “Marubeni also plans to leverage our subsidiary @flexdrivecars’ fleet expertise to ensure they’re getting the most out of the vehicles.”

Calling Marubeni “a major global player in fleet ownership,” Risher noted that the Japanese company manages over 900,000 vehicles through various subsidiaries and joint ventures, and is aiming to be a leader in the “emerging AV space.”

“The more AVs out there, the more the rideshare market expands,” Risher added. “It’s all part of our promise to serve and connect, and we’re excited to have Marubeni along for the ride. We’ll have more to share in the coming months, so stay tuned!”

Lyft is no newbie to driverless taxis: Following an earlier partnership with Waymo, Lyft launched a robotaxi service in Las Vegas in 2022 with Boston-based Motional. Lyft has also announced plans for a robotaxi service in Atlanta later this year, via a partnership with May Mobility.

The latest chapter in Dallas’ robotaxi journey

A Cruise robotaxi, pictured in downtown Dallas in June 2024. [Photo: Cruise]

This won’t be the first foray of robotaxis on Dallas streets.

In October 2023, General Motors-owned Cruise began testing its self-driving vehicles on Dallas streets, following earlier service launches in Austin, Phoenix, and Cruise’s home city of San Francisco. Its Dallas test got temporarily derailed one month later following a collision between a Cruise robotaxi and a pedestrian in San Francisco. Then, after Cruise testing resumed in Dallas last July, General Motors shut down the unit entirely last December, saying it planned to fold the unit’s employees into other GM teams working on advanced driver assist systems and consumer autonomous vehicles.

Yet another Lyft rival plans to launch its own robotaxi in Dallas, and is on schedule to beat it to the punch.

Last October, San Francisco-based Uber and Austin-based Avride announced a multiyear partnership that will bring Avride’s delivery robots and robotaxis to Uber and Uber Eats. The Uber robotaxi service is slated to launch for riders in Dallas later in 2025, the company said in October.

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