Rivian’s Mind Robotics raises $500 million for AI-powered industrial robots

Mind Robotics, an industrial robotics lab, was spun out of electric car maker Rivian He grew up $500 million in Series A funding round co-led by venture 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 in the few months since its founding. This round brings the startup’s value to about $2 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal I reported the news for the first time.

Mind Robotics was created by Rivian CEO and founder RJ Scaringe. It was spun off from Rivian in November 2025, with Scaringe serving as chairman. The general idea is that Scaringe wants to use data from Rivian’s electric car factory to train industrial robots to be more nimble and adaptable, as well as a place to prove the usefulness of those robots.

The company was “founded to address a structural gap with existing industrial automation solutions,” according to a press release announcing the seed round. “Current industrial robots can perform repeatable, dimensionally stable tasks, but a significant share of value-added work in a factory requires human-like dexterity, adaptability, and physical reasoning that classical robots cannot address. Mind Robotics is building the AI ​​foundation—models, hardware, and deployment infrastructure—to fill this gap.”

Scaring told the Wall Street Journal that Mind Robotics will have a large number of robots deployed by the end of this year. In the months since Mind Robotics was announced, he has spoken several times about how the startup intends to focus on traditional factory robot designs, rather than the much-maligned humanoid robots that have received a lot of attention over the past year, such as The one built by Tesla. “Doing cartwheels doesn’t create value in manufacturing,” Scarring told the Wall Street Journal.

Beyond training data and where robots are deployed, there are other ways Rivian and Mind Robotics can collaborate moving forward. In December, Rivian announced that it was developing its own custom silicon aimed at helping power the self-driving vehicle software that will run in its cars.

In an interview with TechCrunch at the event, Scaringe said “it doesn’t take much imagination” to think that Rivian might sell those custom chips to Mind Robotics. “It’s an automated processor, so it could work well for that,” he said.

Mind Robotics is the second Rivian company to be founded in 2025 The first one was tooan electric mobility company starting with Advanced modular e-bike As well as Amazon’s small electric charging cars. This startup has also been supported by Eclipse, and has been ever since He grew up Another $200 million from Greenoaks Capital, where it currently has a valuation of around $1 billion.