Rivian, an electric automaker backed Amazon, Ford, and a slew of institutional investors including T. Rowe Price Associates, Coatue and Coatue made its confidential IPO filing public.
Rivian, which was founded in 2009 under the Mainstream Motors name, but adopted the Rivian name in 2012 to reflect its growth in people, backers, and partners over the past few years. Rivian worked in secret for many years before revealing prototypes of the all-electric R1T truck, and R1S SUV at late 2018's LA Auto Show. Rivian raised $11 billion (of which $10.5 billion was raised between 2019 and 2020), expanded its Normal, Illinois factory, hired thousands of workers, and landed Amazon as a commercial client. The company also filed for an IPO.
Its S-1 now provides more information about the company's operations. According to Rivian's IPO filing, Rivian has its official headquarters in Southern California. This detail was not apparent a few months back. The headquarters of the company were previously listed in Plymouth, Michigan.
According to Rivian's filing, Rivian had 6,274 employees in the United States, Canada and Europe as of June 30, 2021. TechCrunch has been informed by the company that it now employs over 8,000 people. This is an indication of its rapid growth. Rivian also has facilities in Illinois, Plymouth, and Arizona.
According to media reports, the company could be valued at as high as $80billion in its debut.
There are many backers who hope that the number that is being discussed today, which are often pre-IPO pricing figures in companies that draw significant media attention, will become a reality. After digesting the news, the TechCrunch team has taken a first dive into the company's IPO filing. We are now looking for gems and potential headaches.
Let's talk about how costly it is to create an electric vehicle company. We will also discuss why the market size estimates are so low. Rivian will be discussing what kind of voting system he intends to use post-debut. Rivian will also discuss how Amazon can be a blessing and a curse for the company. Finally, we will discuss where Tesla is located.
Sound good? Let's have some fun.
Contrary to what SPACs may tell you, it is very expensive to start an actual EV business.
People love to tell others that it is easier and cheaper than ever to start a business and create a new company. These are pure-play software businesses. It is still extremely difficult and costly to start an electric vehicle company.
The sheer amount of capital Rivian raised as a private company to enable it to start manufacturing vehicles is evidence of this fact. The company's S-1 filing contains even more details.
Here are the operating results of the company for 2019, 2020 and the first two-quarters of this and the last years.
We didn't make any mistakes and missed the revenue line in the graphic. Since then, it has not been there. Rivian has virtually zero historical revenue to report. This makes sense since Rivian is just beginning to deliver R1T trucks. Customers. Rivian is a customer.
