Rivian Automotive, the Amazon-backed electric vehicle, surged on in its Nasdaq debut on Wednesday (10 Nov), surpassing a market valuation of $100 billion.
The stellar stock market debut makes Rivian the second most valuable U.S. automaker next only to Tesla, which is worth $1.04 trillion. Despite selling just very few units of vehicles (it was commercially available only few months back), the IPO has catapulted the start-up ahead of auto behemoths including Ford and GM in market valuation.
Jeff Bezos’s Amazon is the company’s largest shareholder with a stake of about 20% while Ford Motor Co owns little more than 5%
Prior to the IPO, Rivian had raised $10.5 billion since the start of 2019 from Amazon, Ford Motor Co and other investors including T. Rowe Price and BlackRock.
The IPO proceeds, estimated to be around $10.5 billion, will fund company’s expansion plan
Rivian is building the R1T pickup truck, an all-electric pickup truck. The company promises that R1T will offer 300 miles of driving range and lightning-quick acceleration. It also plans to add R1S SUV as well as an electric commercial van. Though the company has shipped very few vehicles , it plans to produce at least 1 million electric vehicles per year by 2030.
The company currently has one manufacturing site in Normal, Illinois, with capacity to produce 150,000 vehicles annually. In addition to another plant in U.S, the company has announced plans for 3 more manufacturing including one in China and another in Europe.
RJ Scaringe, the 38-year-old founder of the company, was described by Jeff Bezos as “one of the greatest entrepreneurs I’ve ever met.”