Investors don’t seem to fully understand RJ Scaringe or his ideas.
The serial entrepreneur, best known for his EV company Rivian, has raised more than $12.3 billion from strategic and institutional investors as well as venture capital firms for his three startups in less than a decade. If the recent $400 million raise for his new venture, Mind Robotics, is any indicator, investors are still happily investing.
Large raises for newly established startups have become more common in recent years. But those hundreds of millions more seed rounds are typically reserved for active defense tech startups or AI companies founded by former OpenAI or Anthropic employees.
Those mega-seeds certainly didn’t flow toward niche markets like electric micromobility startups. Nonetheless, Scaringe has raised exactly $105 million in 2025. He founded a startup called Also that same year. The total has since surpassed $300 million, with DoorDash being one of the backers.
Jiten Behl, a partner at Eclipse and former chief growth officer at Rivian, spent years watching and learning from Scaringe. His company is currently one of Scaringe’s biggest backers, leading rounds in both Also and Mind Robotics, an industrial AI and robotics startup that Scaringe founded last year.
According to Behl, who joined Rivian when the company had only a few employees, storytelling and communication are one of his superpowers.
“When RJ explains a specific problem, topic, opportunity or vision, he has a very unique ability to communicate it very effectively and I think it’s very credible,” Behl said. “He doesn’t try to underestimate the difficulties or overestimate the opportunities. That’s art.”
Scaringe isn’t the only serial entrepreneur to repeatedly raise huge amounts of capital, but founders who can raise billions of dollars across multiple ventures are still rare. Scaringe, a self-described car enthusiast with a PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT, joins a small group of entrepreneurs that includes Tesla CEO and SpaceX co-founder Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anduril and Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, and Jack Dorsey, who founded Square (now Block) and Twitter.
The difference, at least from the perspective of some investors TechCrunch spoke to, is that you can separate selling your idea from selling yourself. “He’s very comfortable and confident with his personality and he’s not trying to be Elon,” Behl said, noting that many people have tried to make the comparison over the years.
“It’s not about him,” another insider with knowledge of Scaringe’s company told TechCrunch. “When you talk to him, he has a passion for the product that is completely external.”
Sure, there’s confidence and a bit of ego, but the same source said, “It doesn’t weigh on you.” The source also added that Scaringe has a unique ability to make you feel like the most special person in the room. This is a feeling that others can relate to.
Giving that kind of undivided attention to investors, suppliers or executives at a manufacturer is difficult at the scale Scaringe is attempting. He runs three companies and often travels between Palo Alto, Irvine, Rivian’s plants in Normal, Illinois, and a soon-to-open second plant in Georgia. And I have a family. Scaringe has three sons with his ex-wife.
Joe Fath, another partner at Eclipse, credits his open-mindedness and collaborative nature with helping him attract investment and manage his connected but disparate businesses.
He also said Scaringe “has the rare combination of being a truly great engineer but also having great instincts for product design,” said Fath, who previously worked at T. Rowe Price, a major backer of Rivian. “There are very few founders who can operate at that level technically while also understanding what resonates emotionally with customers – both consumers and commercial buyers. That combination is incredibly uncommon and has definitely been part of what differentiates Rivian’s products, and now Also and Mind’s products.”
Scaringe’s pace of fundraising over the past eight years has been particularly notable and doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
More than $11 billion, and by far the most VC and strategic capital, went into Rivian. Most were between the blockbuster IPOs of 2018 and 2021. This is an incredible timeline, especially considering that the company, initially called Mainstream Motors, has been around since 2009. For years, Rivian operated as a small, unknown company until it unveiled a new prototype at the Los Angeles Auto Show in late 2018. The fully electric R1T truck and R1S SUV.
Money was soon flowing from all directions. In early 2019, and just two months after it was revealed, Rivian raised a $700 million funding round led by Amazon. American automaker Ford plans to invest $500 million and collaborate on a future EV program that has since been scrapped. Cox Automotive contributed $350 million. Rivian will end the year with a $1.3 billion round (its fourth round of 2019), led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, with additional participation from funds managed by Amazon, Ford and BlackRock.
In July 2020, Rivian raised $2.5 billion, and six months later it raised another $2.65 billion. As rumors of an IPO grew, Rivian closed an additional $2.5 billion private financing round led by Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, D1 Capital Partners, Ford Motor and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. Third Point, Fidelity Management and Research Company, Dragoneer Investment Group and Coatue also participated.
Then came the IPO. Rivian raised about $12 billion in total revenue after securing $78 per share. When it debuted on Nasdaq in November 2021, it had a market capitalization of $100 billion. It is now at $18.2 billion, a significant decline that reflects broader difficulties in the EV sector.
The ability to raise so much capital despite such headwinds is exceptional. But Scaringe didn’t stop at Rivian. If anything, it has sped up. Mind Robotics has also raised more than $1.3 billion to date, and Mind Robotics has been growing at an especially fast pace, raising $115 million in its first year, $500 million in March, and another $400 million this week alone.
Rivian also continues to attract notable backers, with notable deals such as its $5.8 billion joint venture with Volkswagen Group and its up to $1.25 billion Robotaxi partnership with Uber.
“The big question now is how much can he do?” Bell said. “That’s a question that assumes you’ve already reached your limit. The problem is that you don’t see it that way. The value to be created is so great and the impact to be created is so great that you just have to do it.”
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