Rivian‘s incoming interim chief financial officer Derek Mulvey has worked alongside Claire McDonough for about eleven years, across two companies, and joined the EV maker five months after she did.
Rivian said on Thursday that McDonough will step down on October 30 after nearly six years, and that Mulvey, currently VP of Fnance, is expected to take the role on an interim basis while an executive search runs.
The company said the resignation is not the result of any disagreement. Shares fell about 1.2% on Friday’s pre-market session to $16.60.
McDonough is not leaving for family reasons alone, though the two explanations are the same move. GE Vernova named her its next chief financial officer the same day.
The energy equipment maker is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts — the East Coast relocation Rivian described.
She joins on November 1 as Strategic Adviser to CEO Scott Strazik, two days after her last day at Rivian, and becomes CFOon January 1.
Ken Parks remains through the third and fourth quarter earnings calls and the 2026 annual report before advising and retiring in April.
Her offer letter is dated August 25 — two days before Rivian announced her departure.
GE Vernova filed the terms: a $1 million base salary, a target annual bonus of 100% of salary, a long-term incentive award with a target value of $5.2 million expected in 2027, and make-whole awards covering compensation she forfeits by leaving — $14.5 million in restricted and performance stock units vesting over three years, plus a cash component.
The Overlap
The company’s announcement describes Mulvey as having “worked closely with Scaringe and McDonough” and notes that he was previously a VP at J.P. Morgan.
Both worked at the bank in New York.
McDonough joined in September 2014 and rose through VP and Executive Director in retail and consumer investment banking to Managing Director in April 2019, co-heading a group called Disruptive Commerce.
Mulvey returned to J.P. Morgan in mergers and acquisitions in May 2015, having previously been a sales analyst there, and remained until June 2021.
Their tenures at the bank overlapped by close to six years.
McDonough left for Rivian in January 2021.
Mulvey followed in June, joining as director of strategic finance and investor relations — five months before the company’s $13.7 billion initial public offering, one of the largest in US history.
He was promoted to senior director in June 2022 and to VP of finance in March 2025 — seventeen months before Thursday’s announcement.
That second overlap runs to five years and five months by the time McDonough leaves.
Together, allowing for the four months between her departure from the bank and his, the two have worked in the same organisation for approximately eleven years and two months.
McDonough put the same figure on it herself, thanking Mulvey publicly for “over 11 years of partnership.”
What That Changes
Mulvey has covered financial planning, strategic partnerships, capital allocation and investor relations, according to the company.
The investor relations element matters most for the transition: the analysts and institutional holders who will be briefed on the fourth quarter have been dealing with him for five years.
There is a narrower point about the announcement’s wording. Rivian describes Mulvey as previously “Vice President at J. P. Morgan.” He held that title for four months, from February 2021 until he left in June.
The preceding five years and ten months were spent in the bank’s mergers and acquisitions group.
Why It Matters Now
The handover falls in the middle of the most consequential period in the company’s history.
R2 customer deliveries began from Normal, Illinois in early June.
Rivian raised full-year guidance in early July to between 65,000 and 70,000 vehicles, after second-quarter production of 12,613 and deliveries of 12,194.
The company is simultaneously building a second plant in Georgia, developing autonomy in-house — including a sensor-equipped R1T mapping roads in Italy — and working through a partnership with Volkswagen Group worth close to $6 billion.
McDonough’s own summary of the handover was that the financial and operational foundation is now in place to carry the company “through the ramp of R2 and beyond.”
The Open Question
One item is unresolved in the announcement.
McDonough has sat on the board of Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies, the joint venture, since November 2024, and joined AutoZone’s board in April 2025.
Rivian has not said whether she retains the joint venture seat after October 30, or whether it passes to her successor.
The venture is the vehicle through which Volkswagen’s investment flows and through which Rivian’s electrical architecture and software reach the ID.1 and other models of the German group.
