Southern California-based electric truck maker Rivian is beefing up its presence in the Seattle area.
Rivian, which in July announced a $2.5 billion investment led by Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, is hiring almost 40 roles in the region "with more on the way," a Rivian spokesperson told the Puget Sound Business Journal. The employees will remain mostly remote as Rivian figures out its workplace strategy, according to the spokesperson.
Rivian also has a nearly 16,000-square-foot service center in Bellevue, the spokesperson added, but the hiring push seems to extend beyond service-related jobs. According to Rivian's website, the company has open roles in the area in cybersecurity, engineering and data science.
Rivian's hiring plans in the Seattle area are fitting given the company's close relationship with Amazon. The e-commerce giant is purchasing 100,000 vehicles from Rivian and plans to have them all on the road by 2030. Amazon plans to have about 10,000 of them on the road by next year. In addition to July's $2.5 billion round, Amazon has invested in $700 million and $1.3 billion rounds in Rivian.
Rivian, headquartered in Irvine, California, has operations in Michigan, Illinois, Arizona, Canada and the U.K. The company's R1T truck starts at $67,500 and its R1S truck starts at $70,000. Rivian, which was founded in 2009, had planned to start delivering the R1T to consumers in July but had to push the date back to September because of Covid-related supply chain problems, according to Bloomberg.
In addition to the massive funding round in July, Rivian raised $2.65 billion in January and $2.5 billion in July 2020. The company says it has raised $10.5 billion since 2019.
“As we near the start of vehicle production, it’s vital that we keep looking forward and pushing through to Rivian’s next phase of growth,” CEO RJ Scaringe said in a news release after the most recent funding round, adding that the funding would help "scale new vehicle programs, expand our domestic facility footprint and fuel international product rollout.”
