Rivian spinoff Mind Robotics hires former Ford EV chief Doug Field
Field also worked on Apple's secretive car project and oversaw development of the Tesla Model 3.
Doug Field, a veteran in the EV industry with experience at Ford, Tesla, and Apple, has joined Rivian's spinoff, Mind Robotics, as its president. Mind Robotics, an industrial AI and robotics venture, spun out of Rivian last year and is now preparing to scale up its operations. The company aims to build a full-stack solution for industrial manufacturing, using purpose-built robots that will run on foundation models.
These robots will automate industrial and manufacturing tasks at scale, setting them apart from Tesla's humanoid-like robots. Mind Robotics has already secured over $1 billion in funding from notable investors, including Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins, and the venture arms of Volkswagen and Salesforce. Rivian will serve as the first customer and use Mind Robotics as a live, high-volume manufacturing environment for model training and deployment.
The company has more than three times the minority stake in Mind Robotics, owning about a third of the startup as of June 30, 2026.
Written by urgent.news from TechCrunch's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
