Rivian, the electric vehicle maker known for its sleek, adventure-ready designs, is venturing into robotics. The Irvine, Calif.-based company’s newest spinoff, Mind Robotics, focuses on applying A.I.-powered robots to industrial settings. The spun-off entity has already raised $115 million in funding.
Mind Robotics was unveiled during Rivian’s third-quarter earnings yesterday (Nov. 4). Rivian reported $1.5 billion in revenue for the July-September quarter, a 78 percent year-over-year jump driven by a surge in sales ahead of the September expiration of federal EV tax credits. The company posted a $1.1 billion net loss, better than analysts had expected. It also reaffirmed plans to launch its R2 SUV—a more affordable model priced at $45,000—in 2026.
But Rivian’s ambitions now extend beyond cars and software. “We believe there are synergies shared between the development of autonomous driving and physical A.I.,” the company wrote in its shareholder letter. Rivian was tight-lipped on how Mind Robotics will leverage that synergy, saying only that the startup will “focus on the advancement of industrial A.I. to reshape how physical world businesses operate and leverage Rivian operations data as the foundation for a robotics data flywheel.”
Mind Robotics’ $115 million seed round was led by Eclipse, the VC firm’s partner Jiten Behl announced in a LinkedIn post. Behl, a former Rivian executive, noted that Eclipse had previously invested $105 million in ALSO, another Rivian spinoff launched earlier this year to streamline its technology into smaller, lightweight vehicles. ALSO debuted its first product line—an electric bike—in October.
Rivian will remain independent from Mind Robotics but holds a stake in the startup. CEO RJ Scaringe, who also chairs Mind Robotics’ board, said Rivian will be among the first to benefit from the company’s innovations. The startup emerged, he explained, after Rivian took a long-term view of its manufacturing infrastructure and determined it needed to “develop products and robotic solutions that can allow us to run and operate our manufacturing plants more efficiently,” he told analysts.
While A.I. already underpins much of Rivian’s in-house software, Scaringe said Mind Robotics will give it a more physical role—helping design plant logistics and layouts, among other uses. “As much as we’ve seen A.I. shift how we operate and run our businesses through the wide-ranging applications for LLMs, the potential for A.I. to really shift how we think about operating in the physical world is, in some ways, unimaginably large,” he said.
Rivian isn’t the first tech player to wade into A.I. and robotics. Rival EV maker Tesla has staked much of its future on self-driving vehicles and its forthcoming Optimus humanoid robot, while chipmaker Nvidia is similarly betting that the next wave of technology will center on physical A.I. systems.
Robotics investment overall has surged across Silicon Valley in recent months. As of September, funding in the sector exceeded $8.5 billion, according to Crunchbase data, surpassing last year’s $7.5 billion and putting the industry on pace for its biggest year since 2021.
