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. 

Are you done spinning off companies?

Three companies? (pause) Probably.

Are you sure about that? 

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.

When did you start working on Mind? 

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. 

I broadly characterize it as there’s companies that fit into the category of existing industrial robotics companies. And I came to the view that they’re going to continue to exist, but not be the types of companies that build robots that can do human-like tasks. 

And then there’s a new batch of companies that are all like startups, effectively. Most of which are focused on the home, surprisingly — which we could spend hours on. A very large number of these companies are focused on folding towels and doing dishes, a subset of those which are looking at industrial. 

We just came to the view that the ingredients to be successful, none of them had all of those ingredients. And I felt I could build a better company.

I’m not going to build Rivian’s future manufacturing dependency on companies that have never industrialized a product or understanding or have really spent time understanding industrial operations, or that don’t have a data flywheel for training models, or that don’t have supply chains because all those companies, we would need to go help them learn how to be a real company. 

I made the decision to start a new company, and then had to figure out how the governing structure is going to be like. 

And on the day I launched the company, I raised a seed round, and then we just did this Series A  financing.

When you originally founded it or registered, was it called something else?

What was the project name? I’ll tell you, nobody’s asked me that. (pauses) So it was “Project Synapse.” 

Why?

A lot of reasons. This is a great question, no one has asked this. So the name of the company Mind, it sort of links to synapse and links to the brain.

Like firing and misfiring. 

Ha, yeah exactly. And it was both because of the brain link. And then at the time, my kids were in a school called Synapse, and I was inspired by my kids and thinking about the business, so I linked them. I actually almost called the company Synapse, but it’s just too funny of a word; I wanted something simpler, but yeah, it was almost synapse.

It’s funny, one of my board members just wrote me a note and still referred to it as Project Synapse.

Who is on your board?

Myself, Jiten [Behl] of Eclipse, Sameer from Accel, and Rivian has a board representative. It’s a private company, so it’s much easier than a public company.

You talked about the different categories, is what you’re planning on doing most closely related to what Boston Dynamics is working on, which is the Atlas humanoid, but pairing up with an AI Lab [Google DeepMind]?

We’re building the models as well. We’re building the models, the robotics, and the infrastructure to deploy at scale.

Then on mechatronics and the robots itself, there has been a surprising emphasis on mimicking human biomechanics, or in some cases, even going further, making even more complex mechatronics. 

I think what’s missed in industrial [robotics] and this is one of the things we really see clearly, is the work happens with the hands. So, the hands are very, very important. Everything else, from a robotic system point of view, is to get the hands to the right place. And so the ability for the robots to do really complex motions, like, let’s say, like a back flip that’s actually just means the robot has a lot of unnecessary complexity in it for the vast majority of tasks.

And I understand the purpose of showing that is to show the flexibility and capability (of the humanoid robots). But if you were to go into a Rivian facility, you will see very few people that have the type of flexibility that would enable them to do a back flip. And so it’s just when you think about deploying at scale, you want to minimize the complexity, minimize the number of failure modes, reduce power consumption. 

And so I do think many of the robotic systems, particularly humanoid systems, that are being thought about for manufacturing are way too complex relative to what they do. They’re going to be human like, they’ll have hands, there’s a perception model at the top. There’s going to be the ability to adjust and X, Y and Z; there’s going to be locomotion to allow it to move. But I think, mimicking human biomechanics in a manufacturing environment misses some of the fundamental points of manufacturing, which is, it’s all hand based.

I’m trying to visualize what this will eventually look like or what the different variants will be.

So, the hands are the most complicated part of robots, though.  

(Quickly jumping in) But it’s also where you focus your energy, your dollars, the spending, everything should go into the hands. 

And I think the other thing to notice, if you’re building a business that is going to service a lot of different industrial sectors for manufacturing, there’s not one set of hands that’s going to be perfect. 

If you think about the challenge of hands is torque amplification. If you’re picking up a large four-inch diameter steel pipe, it’s a different gripping solution than threading an M4 fastener into an aluminum casting. It’s just very different skills and very different levels of dexterity.

One of the other things that’s happening is in robotics, which is very surprising, is in the biological world we so clearly recognize that evolution has allowed us to create, like very different optimal sets of biomechanics for different things. The best thing for swimming looks very different than the best thing for running and the best thing for climbing looks different than the best thing for lifting. And because of that, humans are not particularly good at swimming. Like, if you were to put me up against a dolphin, I would lose. If you put me up against a cheetah, I would lose. 

We’re more powerful, of course, in our brain. And so in manufacturing, to assume that the shape and form factor of a human is the optimal shape and form factor for all types of work, I think, just misses the fact that we didn’t evolve in a plant. Now, plants have evolved around us, which is an important point. And there’s a huge embedded brown field infrastructure that robots have to plug into. But the part that they have to plug into is they have to roughly fit in the space that humans allow for, and they have to have hands. I call that all out because we have a different perspective then I think a lot of the robots that often started from saying we’re going to work in the home, which is a very different ODD [operational design domain].

But like all these use cases that say we’re gonna do everything a human does. it’s a different ODD and therefore it’s gonna lead to a different form factor than if you said, I’m just gonna be focused on being a manufacturer. 

And actually [in an industrial factory] you don’t have to deal with stairs, you don’t have carpet to tile transitions, you don’t have to worry about tripping on a cat. You don’t have to worry about stepping on a kid. So you just have much more friendly constraints for deployment at scale. And you can map the environment, and the environment doesn’t change, right? 

The one thing that would change the dynamic would be any interaction with humans [in a factory].

Which is an important point. 

That’s why the UI [user interface] is very important. We haven’t shown what it’s gonna look like, but I’ll give you the brief [sic]: It needs to feel friendly, because it’s gonna work a long time with humans. But it doesn’t want to feel dopey and end up with a kick me sticker on its back, right? 

A lot of robotics has also gone towards these very lean, muscular forms that look very Terminator like. I don’t know why. I guess science fiction movies or something has caused the industrial design world to do that. There’s a version of robots and they all sort of blend together. They’re these very athletic sprinter body forms. I think there’s a different form factor that can feel much more approachable, but not dopey.

I’m starting to see a thread with what you did with Also, and your thinking, in terms of modularity with Mind. 

Some of that, yeah. 

The other thing is Rivian. If you were to ask somebody in 2018 what a 1,000 horsepower truck looks like, and you squinted, you wouldn’t think of an R1 [truck]. And so, I think the idea is you can have all this capability, but it doesn’t have to look intimidating or scary. It can be friendly — it’s a design belief and aesthetic that will carry into robotics as well.

Google closed its $32 billion acquisition of cybersecurity company Wiz this week — the biggest acquisition in Google’s history, as well as the largest ever acquisition of a venture-backed startup.

On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan, Sean O’Kane, and I were joined by Shardul Shah, a partner at Wiz’s largest shareholder Index Ventures. Shah walked us through his history with Wiz, which extends before Wiz itself — he previously backed Adallom, the startup previously founded by Wiz’s Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik. 

We also asked Shah about why he thinks the company was such an appealing acquisition target, and how he responded when Wiz walked away from Google’s previous acquisition offer. 

“It’s no surprise that it’s Wiz,” Shah said. “Wiz is at the center of three tailwinds: AI, cloud, and security spend.”

Read an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, below. Shah kicked things off by noting, half-jokingly, that we may have been underselling things by calling the acquisition one of our deals of the week.

Shardul Shah: I think this should qualify as deal of the year or decade, not just the week. Can we change that? Thank you.

But it is really important for the industry. This is the largest venture-backed acquisition in history.

Rebecca Bellan: Yeah, we’ll work that out in post[-production].

Shardul: And more critically, it’s no surprise that it’s Wiz. Wiz is at the center of three tailwinds: AI, cloud, and security spend. And those are central today in light of the AI era where every single workload needs to be secured. So we’re super proud that we were the largest shareholder in the company. And yes, I think it’s at least [the] deal of the month.

Rebecca: So how long has it been? When did you initially invest in Wiz? Because this is the kind of exit that I’m sure investors dream about.

Shardul: Is it six years or 16, is a question for us internally. About 10 years ago, I joined the board of Assaf, Roy, and Ami first company, Adallom. So we got a front row seat at how they make decisions, how they develop trust and how that evolved over time.

Assaf called me on my birthday when he started Wiz. And the seed round is when I joined the board.

Anthony Ha: So, we’ve talked about this deal a couple of times before on the show, but because Wiz isn’t a consumer-facing company, I’m guessing some of our readers are familiar with it, some of it are not. Can you talk a little bit more about what it was — beyond just sitting at the intersection of these really important sectors — that you think made Wiz both an appealing investment and then eventually such an appealing acquisition target?

Shardul: At Index, the core of our business is to focus on people. And I really think the core of the acquisition was the people. Assaf is this incredible leader who can make high quality judgment calls. He’s got great intuition about people and markets. Two of his co-founders, Ami and Yinon [Costica], are almost always in contention — Ami lives in the future, [Yinon] is very, very present and Assaf has the ability to really make a decision on which voice, in which moment, might lead the way. Roy is an execution machine.

So together, they created this environment and culture of trust that allowed them to build a platform from the get-go and take on an existing category with unrivaled speed.

Sean O’Kane: There’s this fun history — fun for us, especially because we got to push them on it at Disrupt a couple of years ago, where Google approached the company and [Assaf] actually walked away from the deal. In that moment, does that almost feel validating for you, as someone who feels like you’ve identified somebody who you truly believe in and is willing to take a step that I think a lot of people would be afraid to take, in the face of such a big, at the time, exit? Maybe not as big as now, but pretty close.

Shardul: Not really. Some of it is probably because I’m irreverent and external validation doesn’t matter, despite my insecurity about you describing this as deal of the week.

I did tell the founders at one point, I think I believe in them more than I believe in themselves. The first blog I ever wrote for Index was titled “Learning to Say No,” actually directed at the Audible founders. […] When founders choose and make decisions, you trust the inputs, like how they make decisions. You don’t really concentrate on the outputs and the luck that goes into whether it’s validated or not.

Rebecca: How important was that in the acquisition of Wiz? Basically, that it’s getting what it can get from Google — funds, access to [Google’s] cloud, and more resources, but still able to maintain its own sense of leadership?

Shardul: So to your point, maybe for the audience, Wiz aims to secure cloud infrastructure and code in production. Most of their customers are part of what’s called a zero critical club, they have the context to know what to prioritize and what to act on. Google’s resources, the infrastructure, the AI talent they have, allows Wiz to extend that recognition while retaining this culture of trust and camaraderie.

Anthony: When we think about important acquisitions, they can be important in a number of different ways. They can be transformative for the acquiring company. They can also be transformative to the startup ecosystem because there’s a lot of people who are going to make a lot of money from this. And then that potentially starts whole new industries, whole new startups.

So when you think about this as a big acquisition, what do you think are going to be the biggest impacts over the next few years?

Shardul: I think it starts with inspiration. I think there’s a new imagination for what can be possible for entrepreneurs across the globe. And that’s amazing, right?

I’m really proud that there’s so many people whose lives will change as a function of this investment, that’s really meaningful and fulfilling. But I think what’s more important is the talent, the skills, and the aspirations of entrepreneurs. So we can’t wait to see what the limits are for the next generation.

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!

This newsletter was wrapped and ready to go and then Travis Kalanick brought me back to 2016 by making an eyebrow-raising announcement.

Uber’s co-founder and former CEO who resigned in 2017 after a string of controversies is back and building a robotics company called Atoms. And, wait for it, he is on the precipice of acquiring Pronto, the autonomous vehicle startup focused on industrial and mining sites that was created by his former Uber colleague, Anthony Levandowski. Kalanick revealed he is already the “largest investor” in Pronto.

That is a lot to digest and the final sign that, yes, we really are back in 2016. For those who may not remember, 2016 was a hyped year for AVs. Uber acquired Levandowski’s startup Otto — a deal that went sideways almost immediately and resulted in Waymo suing the ride-hailing company for trade secret theft.

Now, back to our original programming.

Just last week I waxed on about Rivian and the EV maker’s bid to make the upcoming R2 SUV one of the fastest vehicle launches in history. ICYMI, here it is. 

This week, I’m in Austin for SXSW — the annual tech meets music meets film, TV, and comedy festival. Rivian, the headline sponsor of SXSW, used the event to share pricing and other specs of its R2. There is still a lot to unpack and I’m still interviewing folks as I write this (including CEO RJ Scaringe later today), but here is what we know. 

The performance launch edition, which will be the first version of R2 on the line, will start at $57,990. My initial article digs into what you get for that price. And senior reporter Sean O’Kane focused on the long-promised $45,000 version and why it won’t be coming until late 2027. 

My time at SXSW with the Rivian folks has begun to reveal some of their R2 strategy. The company is leaning heavily into experiential marketing targeted directly at its core market. SXSW attendees in Austin, who include well-heeled tech and creative folks from all over world, are about as close as you can get to a Rivian customer archetype. 

But will it work? The EV itself is far more approachable IMO than the much larger and expensive flagship R1 truck and SUV. The R2 also has a few items, including a new operating system, that is more powerful and capable than its pricey peer. The operating system software, which admittedly I haven’t tested at length, is a standout improvement from the R1 in terms of computing and user interface. For instance, the R2 has one SoC (system on chip) that runs the infotainment and handles 200 TOPS (tera operations per second) of computing on the edge. The next-gen R1 vehicles have four SoC and do most of the computing in the cloud. 

Rivian’s head of software, Wassym Bensaid, told me this edge computing matters because it allows the company to run large language models locally, which will provide much lower latency and better performance. 

Another big change that I will briefly mention are the “halo wheels” on the steering wheel, which are pictured above. These wheels give haptic feedback and let the driver quickly change the temperature, fan speed, and speaker volume without moving their hands or eyes over to the central screen. Chief designer Jeff Hammoud told me this addressed some of the biggest requests from customers without adding a bunch of buttons. Notably, software allows the company to add more capability to these halo wheels over time.

A little bird

Lucid Motors tried to make a splash at its investor day when it showed a robotaxi concept designed to be built on the company’s “midsize” EV platform. Interim CEO Marc Winterhoff sounded declarative onstage, saying the company is “working on a dedicated Lucid Robotaxi” that would come after the midsize EVs debut.

The company later clarified to TechCrunch that there is no active development happening and that the vehicle is just a concept. A little bird tells us the project is very new, having started only in the last two to three months, a timeline that leaves us wondering how long it would really take for Lucid Motors to put something like this on the road.

Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.

Deals!

I guess this is the Rivian issue! Because the company has spun ANOTHER startup and raised a bunch of money to scale it up. I’m referring to Mind Robotics, an industrial robotics lab, and its $500 million Series A funding round that was co-led by venture firms Accel and Andreessen Horowitz.

As Sean O’Kane wrote, the financing follows a $115 million seed round that was led by Eclipse (this VC really seems to be everywhere lately) in late 2025. Mind Robotics is now valued at around $2 billion. 

Robotics was a focus of some of Rivian’s programming at SXSW, including a panel with engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober and Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe. I interviewed Scaringe on the sidelines of the event and asked him about Mind Robotics and what was behind the effort. I also asked if he plans to spin out any more companies. Let’s just say there was a very long pause before he ultimately said, “Probably not.”

I will have a longer story about the interview soon, but one item worth mentioning is that Scaringe basically believes companies are thinking about the future of industrial robotics all wrong. 

“There has been a surprising emphasis on mimicking human biomechanics, or in some cases even going further, making even more complex mechatronics. I think what’s missed in industrial [settings] and this is one of the things we really see clearly, is the work happens with the hands,” Scaringe told me. “So the hands are very, very important. Everything else, from a robotic system point of view, is to get the hands to the right place. And so the ability for the robots to do really complex motions, like, let’s say, a back flip, that actually just means the robot has a lot of unnecessary complexity in it for the vast majority of tasks and understanding.”

Other deals that got my attention this week …

Global ride-hailing company inDrive acquired Pakistan-based quick-commerce startup Krave Mart. The all-stock deal received approval from the Competition Commission of Pakistan, allowing the companies to proceed with the transaction, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. inDrive confirmed the acquisition but declined to disclose its financial terms.

Mirai Robotics, an Italy-based company developing autonomous maritime systems, raised $4.2 million from Primo Capital, Techshop, and 40Jemz Ventures.

Surf Air placed an order for 25 of Beta Technologies’ all-electric ALIA aircraft and acquired options for up to 75 more.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Bryan Reimer, an MIT research scientist who was recently on my Autonocast podcast, poses an interesting question in a column published this month: Are automated vehicles headed for the same political divide as electric cars? 

Archer Aviation responded to a lawsuit with its own counterclaims that rival Joby Aviation allegedly defrauded the U.S. government and its competitors by falsely presenting itself as an American-made company. The electric air sector is getting litigious, which can be mighty distracting and expensive in this early stage of development.

Group14 has started production of silicon battery materials at its BAM-3 factory in South Korea. The factory is capable of producing up to 2,000 metric tons annually, enough for 10 gigawatt-hours of energy storage, or about 100,000 long-range EVs.

Hayden AI, a startup based in San Francisco, has sued its co-founder and former CEO over allegations of serious misconduct and misuse of funds. 

The Federal Aviation Administration OK’d eight pilot programs that will allow a handful of companies, including Archer Aviation, Beta Technologies, Joby Aviation, and Wisk, to start widespread electric aircraft testing as early as this summer. The three-year program will span 26 states!

Harbinger, a Los Angeles-based EV startup, revealed its second vehicle: a smaller, medium-duty work truck.

Lucid Motors is shipping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to Gravity SUV owners.

The National Transportation Safety Board released information that shows two drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2024 while using Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free driving system were likely distracted in the moments before impact.

Nuro, the Silicon Valley-based startup backed by Nvidia, Uber, and SoftBank, is testing its autonomous vehicle technology in Japan.

Slate Auto, the EV startup backed by Jeff Bezos, has a new CEO ahead of its production launch. Former Amazon Marketplace vice president Peter Faricy now leads the company, while former CEO Christine Barman is now president of vehicles.

Tesla is now an officially licensed utility in the United Kingdom.

Wayve is teaming up with Uber and Nissan to launch a robotaxi service in Tokyo, with a pilot scheduled for late 2026.

Uber added Hyundai-owned Motional to its growing robotaxi network. Motional’s self-driving Hyundai Ioniq 5 vehicles now show up on the Uber app in Las Vegas. These vehicles have human safety monitors in the car, for now.

Zoox had a couple of announcements this week that provide a roadmap of sorts of where the Amazon-owned company wants to go. The company has started to map the streets of Dallas and Phoenix, the first step before testing its autonomous vehicles in the Sun Belt cities.

It is also partnering with Uber and will make its robotaxis available to hail on the ride-hailing app in Las Vegas later this year. That Uber tie-up deserves an important caveat, though. Zoox can’t deploy commercially until it gets an exemption from the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards for its custom-built robotaxis, which don’t have a steering wheel or other traditional controls. That process has started. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it would begin taking public comment on Zoox’s application for those exemptions. Zoox only has an exemption to demonstrate its vehicles.

One more thing …

The Chevrolet Bolt EV is coming back — a true EV deep cut. And senior reporter Tim De Chant went to a company-sponsored press drive and came back with an interesting idea that I have become more and more fixated on as an EV sales ploy. The Chevy Bolt is the McRib of the automotive world. Need I say more? De Chant also dug into the economics of GM bringing back the Bolt.