Mind Robotics spun out of rivian to develop physical AI based on real production data. Source: Rivian
Mind Robotics Inc. this month raised $500 million in Series A funding. The startup is building physical AI systems using data from existing automotive production.
“Mind Robotics is building the world’s leading industrial robotics platform, capable of performing dexterous, variable, and reasoning-intensive tasks,” it stated. “The company was founded to address a structural gap with current industrial automation solutions.”
“Existing industrial robotics can perform repeatable, dimensionally stable tasks, but a large share of factory value-add work requires human-like dexterity, adaptation, and physical reasoning that classical robotics cannot address,” the company said. “Mind Robotics is building the AI foundation—models, hardware, and deployment infrastructure—to close that gap.”
Rivian supports robotics ‘data flywheel’ for general intelligence
In November 2025, Mind Robotics spun out of Rivian, an Irvine, Calif.-based electric vehicle maker. RJ Scaringe, founder of both companies, said that Rivian decided to “develop products and robotic solutions that allow us to run and operate our manufacturing plants more efficiently.”
“Our strategic partnership with Rivian provides production-scale data from active manufacturing lines,” said the company on its website. “This fuels our robotics data flywheel, enabling rapid iteration with a customer ready to deploy at scale. With Rivian as our partner, we are able to focus purely on technical execution.”
Mind Robotics said its founders also include people from Physical Intelligence, Waymo, Zoox, and Google. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company’s site is still relatively sparse, but it did say that it plans to build robots that can “generalize across core tasks” and work alongside humans on the factory floor.
Vehicle makers testing humanoid robots include Hyundai, which is using Boston Dynamics‘ Atlas; Mercedes-Benz, which has tried Apptronik‘s Apollo; BMW, which tested Figure AI‘s Figure 01 and 02; and Tesla, which makes Optimus.
Submit your innovation now!Mind Robotics is building a ‘full stack’ of talent and software
Accel and Andreessen Horowitz led Mind Robotics’ Series A round, which reportedly brought its valuation to $2 billion. The company raised $115 million in a seed round led by Eclipse in November.
Mind Robotics said it has investment from Tier 1 automotive suppliers. Sameer Gandhi, a partner at Accel, has joined the company’s board.
“RJ is one of the very few founders who have built and scaled a vertically integrated hardware company,” said Sarah Wang, general partner at investor a16z. “At Rivian, he architected the full stack — vehicle architecture, electronics, battery systems, embedded software, manufacturing processes, and supply chains — integrating each layer into a cohesive system. That kind of end-to-end systems leadership is precisely what it takes to build a generational robotics company and why we’re excited to back RJ and the Mind Robotics team.”
Open roles at Mind Robotics include research and modeling, a machine learning infrastructure engineer, a data engineer, a robotics software engineer, and a hardware engineer.
Rivian last year spun out micro-mobility developer Also with $105 million in funding from Eclipse Ventures, according to TechCrunch.
Tell Us What You Think!