Investors can’t seem to get enough of RJ Scaringe or his ideas.
In less than a decade, the serial entrepreneur best known for his EV company Rivian has raised more than $12.3 billion from venture capital firms as well as from strategic and institutional investors for his three — and counting — startups. If the recent $400 million raise for his new venture Mind Robotics is any indicator, investors are still happily piling in.
Large raises for fledgling startups have become more common in recent years. But these hundred million plus seed rounds have generally been reserved for busy defense tech startups or AI companies founded by former OpenAI or Anthropic employees.
Those super-sized seeds certainly weren’t flocking toward something as niche as an electric micromobility startup. And yet, in 2025, Scaringe raised $105 million for just that — a startup called Also, which he founded that same year. The total has since surpassed $300 million, with DoorDash among its backers.
Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse and former head of growth at Rivian, has spent years watching and learning from Scaringe. His company is now one of Scaringe’s biggest backers, leading rounds in both Also and Mind Robotics – Scaringe’s industrial AI and robotics technology, which he also founded last year.
Storytelling and communication are one of his superpowers, according to Behl, who joined Rivian when the company had just a handful of employees.
“When RJ is explaining a particular subject, issue, opportunity, vision, he just has this very unique ability to communicate it so effectively and it seems so believable,” Behl said. “He doesn’t try to undersell the difficulty or oversell the opportunity, and that’s an art.”
Scaringe isn’t the only serial entrepreneur to repeatedly attract huge amounts of capital, but founders who can raise billions across multiple ventures are still rare. A self-proclaimed car enthusiast who earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering from MIT, Scaringe joins a small cadre 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 called Block) and Twitter.
The difference, at least in the view of some investors TechCrunch spoke to, is that he’s able to separate selling the idea from selling himself. “He’s very comfortable and confident in his own personality, and he’s not trying to be an Elon,” Behl said, noting that many have tried to make the comparison over the years.
“It’s not about him,” another insider familiar with Scaringe’s businesses told TechCrunch. “When you talk to him, he’s excited about the product that’s completely external.”
Sure, there’s confidence and even a little ego, the same source opined, but “it doesn’t weigh you down.” The source also added that Scaringe has a unique ability to make you feel like the most special person in the room — a sentiment echoed by others.
Giving that kind of undivided attention to an investor, supplier or manager at a manufacturer is a challenge on the scale Scaringe is attempting. He runs three companies, traveling frequently between Palo Alto, Irvine, Rivian’s plant in Normal, Illinois, and another plant opening soon in Georgia. And then there is family — Scaringe has three sons with his ex-wife.
Joe Fath, another partner at Eclipse, credits his openness and collaborative nature with helping him attract investment and juggle these connected yet different businesses.
He noted that Scaringe also “has the rare combination of being a really great engineer while also having an exceptional instinct for product design,” said Fath, who previously worked at a major Rivian backer, T. Rowe Price. “Very few founders can operate at that level technically while also understanding what resonates emotionally with customers – both consumers and commercial buyers. That combination is incredibly rare and has clearly been part of what makes Rivian’s products, and now Also and Minds, so differentiated.”
The pace of Scaringe’s fundraising over the past eight years is particularly remarkable and does not appear to be slowing down.
More than $11 billion, and by far the largest chunk of VC and strategic capital, went into Rivian—most of it between 2018 and its grand IPO in 2021. That’s a surprising timeline, especially considering that the company, originally called Mainstream Motors, had been around since 2009. For years, Rivian operated as a small, unknown entity in Los Angeles8 until its 20 unknown moment. Auto Show when it unveiled prototypes of its all-electric R1T truck and R1S SUV.
The money flowed quickly, and from all directions. In early 2019 and just a few months after this disclosure, Rivian raised a $700 million funding round led by Amazon. American automaker Ford would invest $500 million and make plans to collaborate on a later scrapped future EV program. Cox Automotive contributed $350 million. Rivian would end the year with a $1.3 billion round — its fourth of 2019 — led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, with additional participation from Amazon, Ford and funds managed by BlackRock.
In July 2020, Rivian raised $2.5 billion and another $2.65 billion six months later. As whispers of an IPO grew louder, Rivian closed another $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 nearly $12 billion in gross proceeds after locking in at $78 per share. Its market cap hit $100 billion when it debuted on the Nasdaq in November 2021. Today, it’s at $18.2 billion, a sharp drop that also reflects the broader struggles in the power sector.
The ability to raise so much capital despite that headwind is exceptional. But Scaringe did not stop with Rivian. If anything, the pace has accelerated. Also and Mind Robotics have collectively raised more than $1.3 billion so far, with Mind Robotics moving particularly fast: $115 million in its first year, $500 million in March and another $400 million this week.
Rivian also continues to land notable backers through high-profile deals like a $5.8 billion joint venture with Volkswagen Group and a robot taxi partnership worth up to $1.25 billion with Uber.
“Now the big question is, how much can he do?” Behl said. “It is a question [that] already assuming he’s reaching his limit. The thing is, he doesn’t see it that way. His perspective is that there is a huge value to create, there is a huge impact to create, and I just have to do it.”
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