Mind Roboticsan industrial robotics lab created by electric vehicle maker Rivian lifted up $500 million in a Series A funding round led by venture capital firms Accel and Andreessen Horowitz.
The funding, announced Wednesday, follows a $115 million seed round led by Eclipse in late 2025, bringing Mind Robotics’ total fundraising to $615 million within months of its founding. This round brings the startup’s valuation to about $2 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news.
Mind Robotics was created by Rivian CEO and founder RJ Scaringe. It was launched by Rivian in November 2025, with Scaringe serving as president. The general idea is that Scaringe wants to use data from Rivian’s electric vehicle factory to train industrial robots to be more dexterous and adaptable, as well as a space to prove the usefulness of these robots.
The company was “founded to address a structural gap with current industrial automation solutions,” according to a press release announcing the Series A round. “Existing industrial robotics can perform repetitive, dimensionally stable tasks, but a large share of value-added factory work requires human dexterity, adaptation and natural logic that classic robotics cannot address. Mind Robotics builds its foundation of artificial intelligence – models, hardware and development infrastructure – to bridge this gap.”
Scaringe told the Wall Street Journal that Mind Robotics will have installed a large number of robots by the end of this year. In the months since Mind Robotics was announced, he has spoken a few times about how the startup plans to focus on more traditional factory robot designs, rather than the much-hyped humanoid robots that have garnered so much attention in the last year, such as those made by Tesla. “Doing cartwheels doesn’t create value in manufacturing,” Scaringe told the Wall Street Journal.
Beyond training data and a place to develop robots, there are other ways for Rivian and Mind Robotics to work together going forward. In December, Rivian announced it was developing its own custom silicon intended to help power the self-driving software that will come in its cars.
In an interview with TechCrunch at the event, Scaringe said “it doesn’t take a lot of imagination” to think that Rivian might sell these custom chips to Mind Robotics. “It’s a robotics processor, so it could work really well for that,” he said.
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Mind Robotics is the second company launched by Rivian in 2025. The first was also an electric mobility company starting with a high-tech modular e-bike, as well as small electric cargo vehicles for Amazon. This startup was also backed by Eclipse and has since raised another $200 million from Greenoaks Capital, currently valuing it at around $1 billion.
