Rivian Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said he expects the company’s software venture with Volkswagen to keep growing and sees “opportunities to add” to it, after noting that the venture excludes the AI and self-driving work he called a “huge focus,” while declining to name other carmakers interested in Rivian’s technology.
“I think that relationship will continue to expand and grow,” Scaringe said at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco.
The $5.8 billion partnership covers Rivian’s electrical architecture and software but not its AI or self-driving work, which Scaringe called “a huge focus for us as a business.”
“So there’s certainly opportunities to add to that relationship,” he said.
Scaringe did not say what would be added.
Asked directly whether he expected the venture to expand to cover AI, he answered with the same line about continued growth and did not say that it would.
“Not Today”
Scaringe said Rivian also sees “opportunities to sell this type of technology across our technology portfolio to many different brands.”
Asked which companies Rivian was talking to, he said “We haven’t said,” and when the interviewer pressed, he replied, “Not today.”
He did not say whether any talks were under way and Rivian has not announced any technology customer other than Volkswagen Group.
Why Volkswagen Pays
Scaringe used the interview to explain what Volkswagen is buying.
Rivian designed its own electronics and software around a zonal architecture, in which a small number of computers handle tasks that in a conventional car are split among dozens of dedicated control units, he said.
“Outside of China there’s really two companies that have developed that type of architecture, Rivian and Tesla,” he said.
Rivian licensed that technology to the joint venture, which is also reshaping how Volkswagen sources parts, according to Scaringe.
A seat supplier wants to sell “a smart seat” with its own small computer, he said, “and we absolutely do not want a smart seat.”
“Within Rivian that’s very easy because, like, I control the company,” he said. “Within large companies that have a lot of legacy and history, it takes a bit of work to make those changes.”
Most carmakers were “born in a world where the cars didn’t have any computers,” he said, so their skills, organization and even the locations of their core operations differ from what a company built around software and electronics would choose.
“We see a real opportunity to help companies that just don’t have that as a core strength or skill,” he said.
Scaringe said Rivian, by contrast, focuses “a huge part of our engineering and resources on software and electronics.”
“There’s a big shift that’s happening within the automotive supply chain,” he said, where suppliers that have long tried to put computers into their components are now being asked to strip them out.
What the Venture Has Delivered
The venture, formed in November 2024, is reshaping Volkswagen’s “network architectures” and “their approach to even supply chain and sourcing,” Scaringe said.
Volkswagen has paid about $5.3 billion of its $5.8 billion commitment, according to EV calculations based on Rivian’s filings, after a $1 billion loan to Rivian this month secured by its half of the venture.
The final $460 million is due on the earlier of the start of production of the first Volkswagen Group vehicle using the venture’s technology or January 3, 2028.
Volkswagen has said the ID. EVERY1 city car, planned for 2027, will be its first model with the architecture.
The venture is Rivian’s largest source of software revenue, accounting for $308 million of the $515 million in software and services revenue it reported for the second quarter**, according to its July 30 earnings call**.
Volkswagen became Rivian’s largest shareholder in May with 15.9%, according to Rivian’s filings, before an 86.25 million-share offering in July reduced existing holders’ percentages.
The venture had more than 1,500 employees a year after it began operating in November 2024, according to Volkswagen, and one of its senior directors left for General Motors this month.
Scaringe said Volkswagen staff could be seen at Rivian’s Palo Alto offices, where “there’s different vehicles, different brands, different things driving around.”
Autonomy Kept Separate
Rivian’s self-driving program runs outside the venture and is the part of the business Scaringe has pushed hardest this year.
The company is working toward a Level 4 capability, in which the vehicle can drive itself empty, “through the next two years,” he said, and will begin testing its point-to-point hands-free feature with a limited group of owners in December.
Rivian has a separate $1.25 billion agreement with Uber to supply R2 robotaxis from 2028.
Scaringe said the same Large Driving Model underpins both the consumer system and the robotaxi version, with the latter adding sensors and compute.
Rivian vertically integrated its own inference chip, a program that cost “many hundreds of millions of dollars” and cuts the cost of in-vehicle inference by “many hundreds of dollars,” he said.
Whether any of that work reaches Volkswagen depends on an expansion of the venture that Scaringe described as an opportunity rather than a plan, and that neither company has announced.
