Amazon, Ford, Cox Enterprises and Abdul Latif Jameel each own stakes in the electric vehicle maker sized at 5% or higher, as it targets a reported $80bn valuation in the offering.

US-headquartered electric vehicle developer Rivian officially filed on Friday for an initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Select Market that would represent exits for several corporate investors. Rivian has just begun making deliveries for its first vehicle, a five-passenger pickup truck called the R1T, and intends to commercially release a seven-passenger sports utility vehicle dubbed the RS1 in December 2021. The company, which has set a $100m placeholder target for the offering, is yet to generate any revenue but it recorded a $994m net loss in the first six months of this year, up from $377m over the same period in 2020. It had projected an $80bn valuation for the IPO, Bloomberg reported in August this year. The offering will follow over $10bn in funding for Rivian, which raised its early funding from investors including diversified conglomerates Sumitomo and Abdul Latif Jameel, while Standard Chartered Bank provided $200m in debt financing in 2018. E-commerce and cloud computing group Amazon led a $700m round for the company in February 2019, investing alongside undisclosed existing backers to push its overall funding to a reported $1.5bn. Rivian agreed a $500m investment by carmaker Ford Motor Company two months later before Cox Automotive, a subsidiary of media and automotive conglomerate Cox Enterprises, paid $350m in series C funding for a 10% stake in September the same year. Funds and accounts advised by asset management firm T Rowe Price led a $1.3bn series D round for Rivian in December 2019 that also featured Ford, Amazon and funds managed by BlackRock. The company added $2.5bn in a July 2020 series E round also led by funds and accounts advised by T Rowe Price that included Amazon, investment and financial services group Fidelity, Soros Fund Management, Coatue Management, Baron Capital Group and funds managed by BlackRock. Rivian received $2.65bn in a January 2021 series F round led by funds and accounts advised by T Rowe Price at a reported $27.6bn valuation and backed by Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Fidelity, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners and unnamed new and existing investors. Ford and Amazon Climate Pledge Fund co-led a $2.5bn round for the company in July this year with D1 Capital Partners and funds and accounts advised by T Rowe Price, participating together with Fidelity, Coatue, Third Point and Dragoneer Investment Group. Although it did not give precise details of their stake sizes, the filing identified Amazon, funds and accounts advised by T Rowe Price, Abdul Latif Jameel…

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Robert Lavine

Robert Lavine is special features editor for Global Venturing.