Last month, Ford Authority reported that a forthcoming Rivian IPO – expected to take place in October or November – was aiming for an $80 billion dollar valuation, which would raise between $5-$8 billion in additional funds for the upstart EV automaker. Now, the details of the Rivian IPO have been made public, and it reveals some interesting information about the new company, as Reuters reports.
For starters, Rivian lost $994 million in the first half of 2021 – up from $377 million a year ago – which is no surprise given the fact that the production of its first vehicle – the R1T pickup – just began a couple of weeks ago, though early reviews have been universally positive. Rivian also revealed that it has received 48,390 preorders for its R1T and its R1S SUV so far, on top of the 100,000 delivery vans that online retail giant Amazon previously ordered.
Amazon will take delivery of 10,000 of those vans this year, while the company will also enjoy exclusive rights to Rivian’s delivery vehicles for a period of four years, after which it gets the right of refusal to buy those vans for two additional years. At the same time, Amazon is not bound to purchase any vehicles from Rivian whatsoever, and it is still allowed to make deals with other automakers if it wishes.
Rivian’s IPO did not, however, reveal any details about the automaker’s relationship with Ford, which has made multiple investments in the upstart company, including a $500 million dollar investment back in 2019 and an additional $902 million in Q1 of this year. Those investments were supposed to spawn a Lincoln SUV built on Rivian’s Skateboard platform, but last year, Ford canceled that project. However, as Ford Authority exclusively reported last October, the relationship between the two companies is still “going great,” and a Ford EV riding on that platform is currently in the works.
We’ll have much more on Rivain soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for more Rivian news and ongoing Ford news coverage.
Comment
1 billion loss doesn’t sound bad for a company with that high of valuation. As always in business, you gotta spend money to make money. The R1T has been definitely compelling and I hope to see some of Ford’s investment make it into a tech platform that can be used in FoMoCo vehicles.