Rivian spin-out Mind Robotics raises $500M for industrial AI-powered robots

Mind Robotics, an concern robotics laboratory spun retired of the electrical conveyance shaper Rivian, has raised $500 cardinal successful a Series A backing circular co-led by task firms Accel and Andreessen Horowitz.

The financing, announced Wednesday, follows a $115 cardinal effect circular that was led by Eclipse successful precocious 2025, bringing Mind Robotics’ full fundraising to $615 cardinal in the fewer months since its founding. This circular brings the startup’s valuation to astir $2 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news.

Mind Robotics was created by Rivian CEO and laminitis RJ Scaringe. It was spun retired of Rivian successful November 2025, with Scaringe serving arsenic chairman. The wide thought is that Scaringe wants to usage information from Rivian’s electrical conveyance mill to bid concern robots to beryllium much dexterous and adaptable, arsenic good arsenic a venue to beryllium retired those robots’ usefulness.

The institution “was founded to code a structural spread with existent concern automation solutions,” according to a property merchandise announcing the Series A round. “Existing concern robotics tin execute repeatable, dimensionally unchangeable tasks, but a ample stock of mill value-add enactment requires human-like dexterity, adaptation, and carnal reasoning that classical robotics cannot address. Mind Robotics is gathering the AI instauration — models, hardware, and deployment infrastructure — to adjacent that gap.”

Scaringe told the Wall Street Journal that Mind Robotics volition person a ample fig of robots deployed by the extremity of this year. In the months since Mind Robotics was announced, helium has spoken a fewer times astir however the startup intends to absorption connected much accepted mill robot designs, alternatively of the much-hyped humanoid robots that person garnered truthful overmuch attraction implicit the past year, similar those built by Tesla. “Doing cartwheels does not make worth successful manufacturing,” Scaringe told the Wall Street Journal.

Beyond the grooming information and a spot to deploy the robots, determination are different ways Rivian and Mind Robotics mightiness collaborate moving forward. In December, Rivian announced it had been processing its ain customized silicon meant to assistance powerfulness the autonomous conveyance bundle that volition spell connected its cars.

In an interrogation with TechCrunch astatine the event, Scaringe said “it doesn’t instrumentality a batch of imagination” to deliberation that Rivian mightiness merchantability those customized chips to Mind Robotics. “It’s a robotics processor, truthful it could enactment truly good for that,” helium said.

Mind Robotics is the 2nd institution Rivian spun retired successful 2025. The first was Also, an electrical mobility institution that is starting with a high-end modular e-bike arsenic good arsenic tiny electrical cargo vehicles for Amazon. That startup was besides backed by Eclipse, and has since raised different $200 cardinal from Greenoaks Capital, with its valuation presently sitting astir $1 billion.