Rivian begins laying off 6% of workforce

According to an internal email from the founder and CEO of Rivian, the company is laying off about 6 percent of its workforce.

The email that was sent out Wednesday told employees that they would receive an email invite from their manager with more information. The manufacturing operations team will not be affected.

In the last six months, the world has changed with inflation reaching record highs, interest rates rapidly rising and commodity prices continuing to climb, all of which have contributed to the global capital markets tightening. To fully realize our potential, our strategy needs to support sustainable growth as we ramp toward profitability. We need to be able to keep growing and scale without additional financing. We simplified our product plan and focused on where the most impact is to deploy capital.

The priorities for Scaringe and the executive team include ramping and enhancing the R1 (which is the electric truck and SUV), and the electric delivery van.

In his email, Scaringe apologized to the employees who will lose their jobs, noting that they will get 14 weeks of regular pay and health coverage, as well as continuation of mental health and fertility benefits through the end of the year.

He apologized to the people leaving Rivian. Thank you for helping us build. You will continue to be an important part of the story.

Rivian employees are starting to share their layoff news on the professional networking site.

News of possible layoffs leaked earlier this month, prompting Scaringe to send an email to the roughly 14,000 people it employs. In order to stay ahead of the changing economic landscape, the company shared a previously shared strategy.

The Rivian team is the core of the organization and they are working to be as thoughtful as possible, according to an email from Scaringe.