Rivian: $700M fresh investment led by Amazon
Electric car startup Rivian has announced a $700 million financing round led by Amazon. A few days ago, news leaked about Amazon and General Motors wanting to acquire minority stakes in Rivian.
Amazon’s investment has now been confirmed. According to a Reuters report, Amazon would like Rivian’s assistance with the development of delivery vehicles for its logistics network. Apparently last summer, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos personally reached out to Rivian founder and CEO R.J. Scaringe to express interest in an investment.
Rivian’s talks with General Motors have not yet been concluded. The startup’s existing financial backers include Saudi auto distributor Abdul Latif Jameel Co, Standard Chartered Bank and Sumitomo Corp of Americas. Rivian wants to win the race for the first electric pickup on the U.S. market. Specifically, the R1T presented at the LA Auto Show at the end of November is scheduled to go on sale in autumn 2020.
Rivian company founder, RJ Scaringe, already said some time ago that he wanted to work with external companies to develop autonomous driving technologies. Against this backdrop, the cooperation with Amazon makes absolute sense, as the online giant has only recently contributed a “significant amount” to the second round of financing for the startup Aurora, which raised a total of 530 million dollars (467 million euros). This makes Amazon one of the last tech groups to turn demonstratively to autonomous driving.
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