Rivian Automotive has filed for an initial public offering and is seeking a roughly $80 billion valuation, Bloomberg reports. The Irvine, California-based EV startup has submitted its S-1 registration to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and hopes to make its IPO around the Thanksgiving holiday.
Among the thundering herd of EV startups, Rivian is widely considered to be one of the most promising ponies. The company has raised $10.5 billion from backers including Ford and Amazon, and the latter has awarded the young company a contract to build up to 100,000 electric delivery vans by 2030. Rivian has an established factory in Illinois, and claims to have thousands of reservations for its upcoming R1T pickup and R1S SUV. If its vaunted R1T, which boasts 400 miles of driving range and is aimed at the outdoorsy set, goes into limited production this year as planned, Rivian could become the first major entrant in the coveted electric pickup space.
Rivian has big plans for the future. It has reportedly been scouting locations for a European manufacturing site, and has been offered a package of incentives by the city of Fort Worth to build a second US factory there.
The fact that Rivian plans to go the traditional IPO route, rather than going public through a SPAC (a vehicle that has fallen out of favor since a wave of EV SPAC startups soared, then crashed, over the last few months) may earn it additional credibility with investors.
Wall Street seems to consider the IPO announcement a promising development for Rivian’s backers—shares in Amazon and Ford both showed healthy gains on the news.
Source: Bloomberg