Rivian's Mind Robotics names Doug Field president — SkimNews
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- Doug Field has been named president of Mind Robotics, Rivian's industrial AI venture, with the news unveiled onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco (October 13–15).
- Field previously led Apple Project Titan until its 2024 cancellation, oversaw Model 3 development through "production hell" as Tesla SVP of engineering, and ran Ford's EV and technology strategy for five years before departing in April 2026.
- Mind Robotics has raised more than $1 billion from Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins, and the venture arms of Volkswagen and Salesforce, and is building a full-stack robotics platform that runs on foundation models for industrial manufacturing.
- RJ Scaringe will stay involved with Mind Robotics but is handing day-to-day product, engineering, and operations to Field, who will also take over as Rivian's second non-core venture CEO after Also tapped ex-Specialized CPO Chris Yu to run its e-bike business.
- Unlike Tesla's humanoid robots, Mind Robotics won't attempt to mimic human biomechanics, and is using Rivian's factory as "a live, high-volume manufacturing environment for model training and deployment," with Rivian as its first customer.
- As of June 30, 2026, Rivian reported owning about a third of Mind Robotics and roughly a third of Also, with both operating as stand-alone companies.
Why it matters: Rivian just gave a $1B-backed robotics subsidiary a CEO who shipped the Model 3 and ran Apple's canceled car program — a hire that converts Mind Robotics from a Rivian side project into a credibly staffed competitor to Tesla's Optimus and Figure. With Rivian's own factory as both training ground and first customer, the startup gets a data advantage no pure-software rival can replicate.
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