Amazon, Ford, Cox Enterprises, Abdul Latif Jameel and Sumitomo are all notching up exits, as the electric jeep producer priced the largest initial public offering of 2021.

US-based electric jeep developer Rivian is going public today in an $11.9bn initial public offering that will score exits for corporates Amazon, Ford, Cox Enterprises, Sumitomo and Abdul Latif Jameel. The company increased the number of shares in the offering from 135 million to 153 million and priced them at $78.00 each, above the $72 to $74 range it had set. It will float on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and the price makes this the largest IPO so far this year. Rivian began deliveries of its all-electric pickup truck, the R1T, in September this year and its sports utility vehicle, the R1S, is scheduled to follow suit next month. It is largely pre-revenue but generated a $994m net loss for the first six months of 2021. The offering follows about $10.5bn in funding for the company since it was founded in 2009, $2.5bn of which was raised through a July 2021 round co-led by automotive manufacturer Ford, e-commerce firm Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, D1 Capital Partners and funds and accounts advised by T Rowe Price. Investment and financial services group Fidelity, Coatue Management, Third Point and Dragoneer Investment Group also participated in the July round. All the investors apart from Ford, Third Point and Dragoneer were named as investors in a $2.65bn round six months earlier. The January round valued Rivian at $27.6bn and it followed $2.5bn from Amazon, Fidelity, Coatue, Soros Fund Management, Baron Capital Group, funds and accounts advised by T Rowe Price and funds managed by BlackRock in July 2020. Funds and accounts advised by T Rowe Price had led a $1.3bn round for the company in December 2019 that also featured Ford, Amazon and funds managed by BlackRock. It came three months after conglomerate Cox Enterprises invested $350m through subsidiary Cox Automotive at a $3.5bn valuation. Rivian had secured $500m from Ford in April 2019 having received $700m from Amazon and unnamed existing backers two months earlier. It had reportedly already raised a total of $800m from investors including conglomerate Sumitomo and vehicle distributor Abdul Latif Jameel. Company founder and CEO Robert J. Scaringe owns all of Rivian’s 7.83 million class B shares and 1.1% of its 867 million class A shares. Amazon owns 18.9% of the company’s class A shares, down from 22.4% prior to the offering. T Rowe Price holds 15.8% of the class A shares post-IPO, Abdul Latif Jameel subsidiary Global Oryx Company 13.4%, Ford 12.1% and Cox vehicle Manheim Investments 4.7%.…

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Robert Lavine

Robert Lavine is special features editor for Global Venturing.