Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe has raised $500 million in a Series A round for Mind Robotics, a new startup betting that the robotics industry is building the wrong kind of machines — and that humanoid-adjacent robots capable of human-like skills will reshape factory floors within a decade.
The round was co-led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz. Since its founding in November 2025, Mind Robotics has raised a total of $615 million and is now valued at approximately $2 billion, according to the announcement.
The idea did not originate in a vacuum. About two years ago, as Scaringe was building confidence in Rivian‘s forthcoming mid-sized SUV, the R2, he began thinking through the factory infrastructure required to produce it at scale. “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,” he said. “We don’t want to build a bunch of plants and then have them immediately be outdated.”
That concern sent him on a survey of every company working on robots with human-like capabilities. His conclusion: the field is heading in a direction he disagrees with.
Unlike Also — the micromobility startup that incubated inside Rivian before spinning out last year — Mind Robotics was built from scratch as a separate company. Rivian holds no disclosed stake, though the automaker is described as a partner and a potential future customer.
The R2, meanwhile, is months away from delivery. It will start at $57,990, roughly 20% cheaper than the base R1T pickup, and costs the company “roughly half” as much to build as its flagship R1 counterpart, Scaringe said. He described it as more technologically capable than the R1 in several respects despite the lower price point.
Also, the third company in Scaringe’s portfolio, launched a pedal-assist modular electric bike and cargo quad vehicle last October. Rivian retains a minority stake in that firm.
Asked whether he was done founding companies, Scaringe paused before settling on: “Probably.” He expressed confidence in Mind Robotics specifically, calling himself “wildly bullish” on its prospects. “I think it has the potential to be a very large business, just given the scale of what’s happening.”
Classic industrial robotics — the fixed-arm systems visible in plants operated by Rivian, Tesla, and Ford — will continue to exist, he said. But his thesis is that robots capable of human-like dexterity represent a separate, larger opportunity that the industry has not yet addressed correctly. Mind Robotics is his attempt to address it.
The company is the primary sponsor of South by Southwest, where Scaringe discussed the venture publicly for the first time in detail. He also confirmed that Mind Robotics was not the startup’s original name, though he did not disclose what it was previously called.
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