Rivian‘s Chief Strategy Officer, Dagan Mishoulam, has left the EV maker after nearly 11 years to join chip designer Arm as Vice President, Strategy and Partnerships for Physical AI.
“I’m excited to share that I’m joining Arm as Vice President, Strategy and Partnerships for Physical AI!” Mishoulam wrote on LinkedIn. His post did not mention Rivian or give a reason for the move.
“I’ve seen firsthand how advancements in software and AI are changing what vehicles can do,” he wrote. “Now, the opportunity is to take that thinking beyond automotive and into a broad range of applications.”
Rivian has not announced his departure or named a successor and Arm had not announced the hire as of early Thursday.
Rivian’s US website no longer lists him on its leadership page. The Canadian version still showed him as Chief Strategy Officer on Thursday, with a biography saying that he “is leading Rivian’s corporate strategy.”
His LinkedIn profile lists him as Chief Strategy Officer from January to October 2026 and in the Arm role from October, based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Nearly 11 Years at Rivian
Mishoulam joined Rivian in 2016 as Senior Director of Strategy, according to his profile, fiver years before the company began delivering its first vehicles.
That biography says he “is responsible for translating Rivian’s vertically integrated technologies into commercial business opportunities and high-impact partnerships.”
It adds that he has “played key leadership roles in crafting the company’s strategy, fundraising, developing major strategic partnerships and building key areas of the business.”
He became VP of Strategy and Go-to-Market in 2020. In that role he signed, on Rivian’s behalf, an amendment to the company’s framework agreement with Amazon Logistics for its electric delivery vans.
The amendment, dated as of October 26, 2021, carries his signature as “VP, Strategy & Go To Market” with a signature date of November 10, 2021, the day of Rivian’s initial public offering. Rivian filed it as an exhibit to its 2022 annual report.
It added provisions allowing Amazon to direct Rivian to buy certain components from suppliers chosen by Amazon, and set out who bears the cost of changes, recalls and regulatory work tied to those parts.
In July 2023, under the same title, he was the Rivian executive quoted when Amazon put more than 300 Rivian electric delivery vans on the road in Munich, Berlin and Düsseldorf. “We’re thrilled to see the EDV rolling out in Germany today,” he said.
In December 2023, as “VP, Strategy & Fleet,” he was the Rivian executive quoted when AT&T said it would pilot Rivian’s commercial vans and R1 models in its fleet.
“We couldn’t be happier to collaborate with AT&T as we work together to help cut emissions and protect our environment,” he said at the time.
From Commercial Chief to Strategy
Mishoulam took over most of Rivian’s commercial responsibilities in July 2024, when Chief Commercial Officer Kjell Gruner resigned less than a year after joining from Porsche Cars North America.
“Dagan Mishoulam, who has played an integral role at the Company for the past several years, is assuming the role of Senior Vice President, Commercial, and many of the responsibilities previously held by Dr. Gruner,” Rivian said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on July 26, 2024.
Gruner had overseen sales, marketing, customer care, delivery service and fleet operations.
In January 2026, Rivian named Greg Revelle to the new post of Chief Customer Officer, with responsibility for its go-to-market strategy, including sales, marketing and operations, ahead of the R2 launch.
Mishoulam’s profile shows him moving from Senior Vice President, Commercial, to Chief Strategy Officer the same month. Rivian did not publicly explain the change.
Rivian’s April proxy statement lists three executive officers: Chief Executive Officer RJ Scaringe, Chief Financial Officer Claire McDonough and Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Legal Officer Michael Callahan. Mishoulam was not among them.
Arm’s Physical AI Unit
Arm, the British chip designer controlled by SoftBank Group, set up a Physical AI unit last January, combining its automotive business with its robotics work, Reuters reported at the time. It sits alongside Arm’s Cloud and AI and Edge business lines.
“I’m looking forward to working with Drew Henry and the Arm team to make physical AI more capable, accessible, and scalable across industries,” Mishoulam wrote.
Arm’s website describes Henry as Executive Vice President of its Physical AI Business Unit, “leading the company’s strategy for the technologies that power automotive, robotics, and autonomous systems.”
In December 2025, Arm said in an article bylined by Henry that Rivian’s third-generation in-house autonomy hardware platform was “built on a custom chip developed in close collaboration with Arm.”
That chip, the Rivian Autonomy Processor (RAP1), uses Arm’s Armv9 architecture and Cortex-A720AE CPU cores, according to Arm.
Rivian’s own announcement that day described RAP1 as a “custom 5nm processor” and did not mention Arm. Rivian said it expected the third-generation hardware to “ship on R2 models starting at the end of 2026.”
Arm returned to the chip in its February results, saying the processor “will power their first production vehicle based on a custom Arm chip.”
Rivian has scheduled its second Autonomy and AI Day for December 9 in San Francisco.
“As physical AI advances, I believe Arm’s role as the compute platform for these technologies will only become more important,” Mishoulam wrote.
Before Rivian, Mishoulam spent four years at consultancy Roland Berger in the Chicago area, as Senior Consultant and then Project Manager, according to his profile. His Rivian biography says he also worked in the automotive supply base and in engineering at Chrysler.
Since 2023, he has also sat on the board of Kindred Motorworks, which Rivian describes as “a manufacturer of electric vintage cars.”
Run of Departures
The move adds to a run of senior changes at Rivian as it ramps up production of the R2.
Chief Financial Officer Claire McDonough leaves on October 30 to become Chief Financial Officer of GE Vernova, a day after Rivian reports third-quarter results.
Vice President of Finance Derek Mulvey will serve as interim CFO. Rivian will release those results after the market closes on October 29 and host a webcast at 5 p.m. New York time.
Jon Franklin, Vice President and Corporate Controller, left in September.
This month, Rivian’s Senior Manager of Vehicle Safety left after nearly eight years, and the company replaced the head of R2 general assembly at its plant in Normal, Illinois, with a former Tesla Cybercab line manager.
Rivian has guided to 65,000 to 70,000 deliveries this year. Founder and Chief Executive Officer RJ Scaringe has said its software joint venture with Volkswagen will continue to expand.
