The $5 billion blockbuster deal between Volkswagen Group and Rivian is just days away. But it turns out VW Group was tapping into Rivian’s software expertise months before the partnership was announced.
VW Group’s embattled software arm Cariad has hired at least 23 of the startup’s top employees in recent months, a review of LinkedIn data reveals to TechCrunch. Cariad’s chief software officer, chief product security officer, two of its vice presidents and two principal engineers have been hired by Rivian. Almost all other hires have come from senior software roles at Rivian, many of them this year.
The hiring comes ahead of any deal between VW and Rivian. The joint venture, which would allow the German giant to leverage Rivian’s software and electrical architecture, is still being shaped. The JV is not expected to be formalized until the fourth quarter – a detail that VW and Rivian representatives pointed out.
However, the wave of new hires shows VW’s – and, more specifically, Cariad’s – desire to tap into software talent. And those early hires could prove fruitful as the joint venture comes together.
The hires bolstered Cariad’s effort to establish a Silicon Valley outpost in Mountain View called the SDV Hub — an acronym that gives a nod to the so-called software-defined vehicle that every automaker is chasing. The SDV node is the ground zero for Cariad’s next-generation software architecture, known as “software 2.0”.
In fall 2023, Cariad hired Sanjay Lal, who most recently led the development of Rivian’s next-generation infotainment and middleware across the vehicle and the cloud, to lead the creation of the SDV hub. The focus of engineers at the SDV center in California — as well as some Germany-based workers under Lal — is on the 2.0 software architecture that is supposed to be an operating system designed for all VW Group brands.
The center’s focus suggests the same employees could be part of the eventual VW-Rivian joint venture. It should be noted that spokespeople for both Rivian and VW said the speculation was premature.
“We are initially focused together on the smooth launch of our joint venture with Rivian and will comment on anything else later,” VW said in an emailed statement.
While Cariad has more than 7,000 employees worldwide, its footprint in North America is much smaller. The SDV hub currently has about 230 employees, according to LinkedIn. This means that recent immigrants from Rivian now make up around 10% of Cariad’s workforce in the region.
These hires come as Cariad is in the midst of restructuring after years of struggles. Created in 2020, Cariad was supposed to accelerate the development of advanced software and electrical architecture for the Volkswagen Group’s big push into EVs. As Cariad grew in size, its problems worsened. The 1.2 software platform, which was developed for Audi and Porsche cars, was originally scheduled to be completed in 2022. Constant delays and other internal problems have led to several executive turnovers and is believed to be one of the reasons why VW Group CEO, Herbert Diess fired 2022.
Cariad, now under the direction of Peter Bosch, has successfully completed the 1.2 software architecture that will be present in the upcoming Porsche Macan EV. But it’s architecture 2.0 that’s meant to catapult all of the group’s brands into the same realm as Tesla.
Tapping into talent from the likes of Rivian wins the way Cariad has been building its North American workforce over the past two years. Before the last few months, most Cariad employees in the region came from other parts of the Volkswagen Group, from car or software suppliers. Far fewer came from tech companies, like Cariad’s director of software engineering, who spent nearly a decade at Google.
VW and Cariad aren’t the only ones looking to startups like Rivian to develop talent. Ford’s secret low-cost EV project is drawing workers from Rivian, Tesla, Lucid Motors and even Apple’s defunct Project Titan, as TechCrunch first reported earlier this month.
