Investors can’t seem to get enough of RJ Scaringe or his ideas.
In less than a decade, the serial entrepreneur known for his electrical company Rivian has raised more than $12.3 billion from venture capital firms, as well as strategic and institutional investors for his three—and countless—startups. If the latest $400 million raise for his new venture Mind Robotics is any indicator, investors are still piling in with glee.
Large raises for early stage startups have become more common in recent years. However, these hundreds of millions of seed rounds have generally been reserved for buzzy defense tech startups or AI companies founded by ex-OpenAI or Anthropic employees.
Those big seeds certainly weren’t flowing into something as niche as an electric micromobility startup. And yet in 2025, Scaringe raised $105 million for just that—a startup called Alsowhich he founded in the same year. The total has since topped $300 million, with DoorDash among its backers.
Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse and former head of development at Rivian, has spent years watching and learning from Scaringe. His company is now one of Scaringe’s biggest backers, having led rounds in both Also and Mind Robotics — Scaringe’s industrial artificial intelligence and robotics company that he also founded last year.
Storytelling and communication are one of his superpowers, according to Behl, who joined Rivian when the company was downsized.
“When RJ explains a particular subject, issue, opportunity, vision, he just has this unique ability to communicate it so effectively and he seems so credible,” Behl said. “He’s not trying to underplay the difficulty or oversell the opportunity, and that’s art.”
Scaringe isn’t the only serial entrepreneur to repeatedly raise huge amounts of capital, but founders who can raise billions across multiple ventures remain rare. A self-proclaimed car enthusiast who earned his PhD 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 Dlocked.
The difference, at least in the view of some investors TechCrunch spoke to, is that he can separate selling the idea from selling himself. “He’s very comfortable and confident in his personality and he’s not trying to be Elon,” Behl said, noting that many have tried to make the comparison over the years.
“It’s not about him,” another person familiar with Scaringe’s companies told TechCrunch. “When you talk to him, he has an enthusiasm for the product that’s completely external.”
Of course, there is self-confidence and even a little bit of ego, the same source thought, 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 executive at a manufacturer is a challenge on the scale that Scaringe is attempting. He runs three companies, often traveling between Palo Alto, Irvine, Rivian’s plant in Normal, Illinois, and a soon-to-open second plant in Georgia. And then there’s family — Scaringe has three sons with his ex-wife.
Joe Fath, another Eclipse partner, credits his open-mindedness and collaborative nature with helping him attract investment and manage these connected but disparate businesses.
He noted that Scaringe “also has the rare combination of being a really great engineer while also having a great instinct for product design,” said Fath, who previously worked at a major Rivian backer, T. Rowe Price. “Very few founders can operate at this level technically while also understanding what resonates emotionally with customers — both consumers and trade buyers. This combination is incredibly unusual and is clearly part of what makes Rivian’s products, and now Also and Mind’s, so differentiated.”
Scaringe’s fundraising pace over the past eight years has been particularly remarkable and doesn’t 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 big IPO in 2021. That’s an impressive timeline, especially when you consider that the company, originally called Mainstream Motors, has been around since 2009. The Los Angeles Auto Show, when it unveiled prototypes of the R1T all-electric truck and SUV R1S.
Money was soon flowing, and from every direction. In early 2019 and just a few months after this revelation, Rivian raised a $700 million funding round led by Amazon. American carmaker Ford will invest $500 million and make plans to collaborate on a future EV program that has since been scrapped. Cox Automotive contributed $350 million. Rivian will close the year with a $1.3 billion round — its fourth in 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 equity 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 Coat.
Then came the IPO. Rivian raised nearly $12 billion in gross revenue after locking in $78 per share. Its market capitalization reached $100 billion when it debuted on the Nasdaq in November 2021. Today, it stands at $18.2 billion, a significant drop that also reflects the broader struggles of the EV industry.
The ability to raise so much capital, despite headwinds, is extraordinary. But Scaringe didn’t stop with Rivian. If anything, the pace has quickened. Mind Robotics has also 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 just this week.
Rivian also continues to attract notable backers through high-profile deals such as its $5.8 billion joint venture with Volkswagen Group and a robotaxi partnership worth up to $1.25 billion with Uber.
“Now, the big question is, how much can he do?” Behl said. “That’s a question [that] he already assumes he’s reaching his limits. The thing is, he doesn’t see it that way. His view is that there is huge value to be created, there is huge impact to be created and I just have to do it.”
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