Rivian’s RJ Scaringe thinks we’re doing robots all wrong Kirsten Korosec 7:30 AM PDT · March 15, 2026 If you haven’t heard, Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe has another company — his third by our count. And this time it’s focused on robotics.
The serial entrepreneur is best known for Rivian, the buzzy EV maker that was thrust into the spotlight in 2018 after debuting an electric truck with its now-famous gear tunnel.
The publicly traded company is now a few months away from delivering its most important EV yet, a mid-sized SUV called the R2. This EV is cheaper to build than its flagship R1 counterpart (Scaringe tells me “roughly half” the cost), and yet, in many ways is more technologically capable. It will also be cheaper for buyers; the first version of the R2 will start at $57,990, 20% cheaper than its base R1T pickup.
And then there’s Also, the micromobility startup that began as a skunkworks program within Rivian and spun out last year backed by VC money. Also, which Rivian maintains a minority stake in, launched a pedal-assist modular electric bike and cargo quad vehicle last October. Scaringe is deeply involved with that startup as well.
Now, Scaringe has robotics on his mind. And he aptly named his new startup Mind Robotics, which I learned was not its original name. (More on that below.)
Mind Robotics was not born within the walls of Rivian, although the automaker may someday be a customer. Mind Robotics is a private company founded by Scaringe that recently raised a $500 million Series A round co-led by venture firms Accel and Andreessen Horowitz. The company, which has raised $615 million since its founding in November 2025, is now valued at about $2 billion.
I sat down with Scaringe on the sidelines of South by Southwest, of which his company is the primary sponsor, to talk about everything he’s working on. The Q&A below, which has been edited for brevity and clarity, focuses on our discussion about robotics and how his new startup is taking a new approach.
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Yeah. I mean, yeah. (nods in agreement) Also [the ebike company] is here, so that’s cool. It’s nice to see. It’s cool to see the brands co-existing, which makes me happy.
Mind [Robotics] is something I’ve been working on for a while. Also was unique because it was built within Rivian, and that we spun it out. Mind … I started a whole new company, Rivian’s like a partner in it. I’m wildly bullish on it. It really benefits Riven, but I think it has the potential to be a very large business, just given the scale of what’s happening.
So, Mind is an interesting story and it actually comes back to R2.
About two years ago, we were building a lot of confidence in R2. So if we’re confident in R2 that means we think there’s gonna be a lot of volume. If we think there’s gonna be a lot of volume, it means we think we’re going to need a lot of plants [factories].
And so effectively, I said, ‘Boy, if we’re gonna have to build four or five plants over the next decade, that means we’re going to spend many, many billion dollars in capex. What are these plants going to look like? And we don’t want to build a bunch of plants and then have them immediately be outdated.’
I kicked off an effort to study the future of manufacturing, and essentially came to the view that classic industrial robotics is going to continue to exist like what you see in our plant today, or in a Tesla plant or a Ford plant. But the idea of robotics with human-like skills is going to be really important.
We already had a strong thesis around AI in the physical world. I met with essentially every company that’s working on some form of robotics that can do human-like skills.
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