Amazon and Ford Motors backed Rivian, is expected to go public and invite investments by September this year according to a report by Bloomberg.
Rivian is an electric vehicle start-up which has signed a contract with Amazon to build 100,000 electric delivery vans for its delivery fleet, some of which have already gone into production and trials. The company it has managed to create a massive due to its industry breaking offerings, and at the moment, it is set to become the first company in the world to launch an electric pick up truck.
Rivian is reportedly in contact with various bankers in search of an IPO, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. While the company declined to comment, anonymous sources commented that an IPO is in fact, in the cards, even though it could be delayed to later this year or even be bumped to 2022. However, this IPO could be the biggest of this year, if it goes through, and is estimated to come with a price tag of $50 billion or more by experts. This is the most noteworthy IPO since Rivian’s competitor Tesla’s 2010 offering.
The start-up has been seeing exponential growth for the past few years. Rivian currently employees around 36,000 people, hired across offices in Michigan, California, and Illinois. In January itself, Rivian was valued at a massive $27.6 billion in a funding round. In that round, the EV maker raised $2.65 billion from a group of investors led by T. Rowe Price Group Inc. Rivian aims to put electric pickups and SUVs in production this year, deliveries oh which will begin in June and August. The R1T and R1S are expected to cost $77,500 and $75,000 at launch, respectively. The company has raised around $8 billion from investors for the same since 2019.
Apart from these pick up trucks and Amazon’s delviery vans, the company also expects to launch other smaller vehicle models in the future, which will be targeted at China and Europe specifically.
Other EV-makers that have gone public in 2020 include Chines Li Auto Inc. and XPeng Inc., which raised $1.26 billion and $1.5 billion respectively, as reported in a US listing. Another fuel cell-truck start-up, Hyzon Motors Inc. merged with Decarbonization Plus Acquisition Corp. in a deal valued at $2 billion. Nikola Corp. also went public recently with SPAC or a blank-check company.
