Rivian’s RJ Scaringe thinks we’re doing robots wrong

If you haven’t heard, Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe owns another company – the third in our list. And this time it’s focusing on robotics.

The serial entrepreneur is best known for Rivian, an EV manufacturer that made headlines in 2018 after releasing an electric car with its iconic tunnel.

The publicly traded company is months away from delivering its flagship EV, a mid-size SUV called the R2. This EV is cheaper to make than its R1 counterpart (Scaringe tells me “about half” the price), however, in many ways it is technically feasible. It will also be cheaper for consumers; the first model R2 will start at $57,990, 20% cheaper than its predecessor R1T.

And then there’s Also, a micromobility startup that started as a skunkworks program within Rivian and it came out last year with the help of VC funds. Also, which Rivian still maintains a small part, he introduced a pedal-assist modular electric bike and cargo quad car October is over. Scaringe is deeply concerned with that beginning.

Now, Scaringe has robots on his mind. And he called his new name Mind Robotics, which I learned was not his original name. (More on this below.)

Mind Robotics was not born within the walls of Rivian, although the car manufacturer may one day become a customer. Mind Robotic is a private equity firm founded by Scaringe that recently raised a $500 million Series A round led by companies Accel and Andreessen Horowitz. The company, which has raised $615 million since its founding in November 2025, is now valued at nearly $2 billion.

I sat down with Scaringe at South by Southwest, where his company is a sponsor, to talk about what he’s working on. The Q&A below, edited for brevity and clarity, focuses on our discussion of robotics and how its new beginnings are taking a new direction.

Are you done selling companies?

Three companies? (pause) Maybe.

Are you sure about that?

Yes. I mean, yeah. (nods in agreement) Also (the ebike company) is here, so that’s good. It’s fun to watch. It’s great to see brands being there, which makes me happy.

Minds (Robots) is something I’ve been working on for a while. It was also unique because it was built inside Rivian, and we released it. Thoughts… I started a new company, Rivian as a partner. I am so amazing. It’s very profitable for Riven, but I think it has the potential to be a very big business, depending on the scale of what’s going on.

When did you start working on Mind?

So, Mind is an interesting story and it goes back to R2.

About two years ago, we were building a lot of confidence in R2. So if we are confident in R2 it means we think there will be more volume. If we think there will be more volume, it means we think we will need more plants (factories).

And effectively, I said, ‘Boy, if we build four or five plants over the next ten years, we’re going to spend billions of dollars in capex. What will these plants look like? And we don’t want to create a bunch of plants and then become obsolete immediately.’

I started trying to learn about the future of manufacturing, and I actually saw that advanced robotics for industrial equipment will continue to exist as you see in our plants today, or in a Tesla plant or a Ford plant. But the concept of robotics with human-like abilities will be very important.

We already have strong opinions around AI in the physical world. I met every company that is working on robotics that can perform human-like skills.

I know there are companies that are among the best robotics companies out there. And I realized that they will continue to exist, but not the kinds of companies that make robots that can work like humans.

And then there is a new group of companies that are like startups, well. Most of them focus on the house, surprisingly – which we can spend hours on. Most of these companies focus on paper towels and dishwashing, a small segment that focuses on industry.

We just came to the conclusion that the ingredients for success, none of them had it all. And I felt that I could make a better company.

I am not going to build Rivian’s future to rely on companies that have not started the product industry or understand or really spend time understanding the work of the industry, or that do not have the flywheel data for educational models, or that do not have a supply chain because all those companies, we should go to help them learn how to be a real company.

I made the decision to start a new company, and then I had to figure out how to manage it.

And the day I started the company, I raised the seed, and then we just did Series A funding.

When you started or registered, was it called something else?

What was the name of the project? I’m telling you, nobody asked me that. (pause) So it was “Project Synapse.”

Why?

Many reasons. This is a great question, no one has asked this before. Hence the name of the company Mind, it communicates with synapses and communicates with the brain.

Like shooting and misfiring.

Ha, yes exactly. And it was all because of the brain link. And then at that time, my children were in a school called Synapse, and I was inspired by my children to think about business, so I joined them. I actually almost called the company Synapse, but it’s just a very funny word; I wanted something simple, but yeah, it was almost a synapse.

It’s funny, one of my board members just wrote me a letter and called it Project Synapse.

Who is on your team?

Myself, Jiten (Behl) from Eclipse, Sameer from Accel, and Rivian have an agency representative. It’s a private company, so it’s easier than a public company.

You talked about the different teams, and what you plan to do is closely related to what Boston Dynamics is working on, which is Atlas humanoid, but it includes the AI ​​Lab (Google DeepMind)?

We also build models. We are building models, robotics, and architecture for large-scale use.

So for machines and robots themselves, there has been an incredible emphasis on mimicking human biomechanics, or in some cases, even going so far as to create more complex machines.

I think what is missing in the industry (robotics) and this is one of the things that we see well, is work done by hands. Therefore, hands are very important. The rest, from the point of view of the robotic system, is to get the hands in the right place. And so the ability of robots to do very complex things, like, say, like doing a back flip that just means that the robot has a lot of unnecessary complexity in it for a lot of tasks.

And I understand the purpose of the show is to show flexibility and capability (of humanoid robots). But if you go to a Rivian site, you’ll see a few people with a convertible that can help them turn their backs. And that’s when you think about scaling, you want to reduce complexity, reduce the number of failure modes, reduce energy consumption.

And that’s why I think that most of the robotic systems, especially the humanoid systems, that are being considered for development are very difficult compared to what they actually do. They will be people like, they will have hands, there is a pattern of awareness above. There will be the ability to change with X, Y and Z; There will be ways to move. But I think, modeling human biomechanics in a manufacturing environment misses some of the fundamentals of manufacturing, which is, it’s all hands-on.

I’m trying to see what this will look like in the end or what the different colors will look like.

So, the hands are the most difficult part of the robot, though.

(Quick jump) But that’s where you put your energy, your dollars, your money, everything has to go hand in hand.

And I think another thing to be aware of, if you are building a business that works in many industrial sectors, no single manual team will be perfect.

If you are thinking about hand problems and torque amplification. If you are taking a large four inch steel pipe, it is a different connection method than connecting an M4 connector in aluminum. It is a very different skill with different levels of dexterity.

One of the things that is happening with robotics, which is really amazing, is in the natural world that we clearly understand that evolution has allowed us to create, like very different types of biomechanics for different things. The best swimming product looks very different from the best running product and the best climbing product looks different from the best lifting product. And because of this, people don’t really know how to swim. Like, if you put me on a dolphin, I’m going to lose. If you pit me against a cheetah, I will lose.

We are very powerful, of course, in our brains. And so in design, to think that the shape and form of a person is the right form and form of all kinds of work, I think, I miss the fact that we have not evolved in plants. Now, plants have changed around us, which is an important point. And there’s a big integrated brown space that the robots have to connect to. But the part that they have to connect to is that they have to go into places that people allow, and they have to have hands. I call all these because we have different ideas and I think that many robots who often start saying that we will work in the house, which is very different from ODD (work design).

But like all things that are used that say we will do whatever a person does. it’s a different ODD because it leads to a different style than you would say, and it’s more focused on being creative.

And in fact (in an industrial factory) you don’t have to deal with the stairs, you don’t have carpet to change the tiles, you don’t have to worry about hitting the cat. You don’t have to worry about stepping on a baby. So you only have more restrictions to send to the level. And you can map the universe, and the universe doesn’t change, right?

One thing that can change is any interaction with people (in the factory).

That is an important point.

This is why UI (user interface) is so important. We have not shown what it will look like, but I will give you a summary (sic): It must be friendly, because it will work for a long time with people. But you don’t want to feel like a fool and make me a sticker on the back, do you?

Many robotics have also gone to lean, muscular models that look like the Terminator. I do not know why. I think science fiction movies or something has caused the industrial world to do this. There is a type of robots and they all connect together. These are very fast bodies. I think there is a different look that would feel friendly, but not stupid.

I’m starting to see the thread and what you did with it Also, with your ideas, modularity and Mind.

Some of it, yes.

Another thing is Rivian. If you were to ask someone in 2018 what a 1,000 horsepower car looks like, and you looked closely, you wouldn’t think of the R1 (lol). And so, I think the idea is that you can have all this potential, but it doesn’t have to look scary or dangerous. It can be friendly – it’s a built-in trust and beauty that can also create robotics.