You may not have even heard of Rivian, but the electric vehicle maker has gone public in one of the biggest IPOs (initial public offerings) in history. Shares started trading on the Nasdaq this week at around $78 per share, raising about $12 billion in cash for the company. This share price gives Rivian an overall valuation of $80 billion, which is immense given that it has only recently started shipping its first product – the Rivian R1T electric bakkie.
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A major reason for the excitement prior to the initial offering and shares starting to trade is of course due to the fervour surrounding electric vehicles and their expected domination of the automotive industry sooner rather than later. Tesla is a major reason for all this hype surrounding start-ups specifically focused on purpose-built electric vehicles from the ground up. Tesla is now one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Rivian has a total of 55,000 pre-orders of its R1T electric bakkie and R1S electric SUV, the latter of which hasn’t started shipping. The company’s strategy is also very different to some others that have made outlandish claims of what they hope to achieve. Rivian has been very conservative in the few estimates it’s offered for what the next few years look like and has instead emphasized that it will be largely focused on making vans for Amazon, which owns about 20 percent of the start-up.
Soon after trading began the value of the stock surged to $106, which valued the company at around $100 billion. For context, that’s higher than the value of all other car manufacturers in the world other than Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen, and China’s BYD.
Rivian has said that they aim to make 1 million cars per year by 2030, although they have given no detail of future planned vehicles. We only know they plan to sell a non-delivery version of its van to consumers sometime in the next two years as well.
