Musk-Like or Not, This 36-Year-Old CEO Has Amazon Riding Shotgun
R.J. Scaringe, founder of Rivian Automotive, turns heads with electric pickups and SUVs.
Rivian Automotive founder R.J. Scaringe approached deep-pocketed Saudi investors in late 2011 with an audacious proposal. The young entrepreneur confessed he had no experience running a company. He admitted his initial prototype—a battery-powered sports car much like Tesla Inc.’s Roadster—was the wrong idea, and planned to build a pickup instead.
Of course Scaringe, now 36, didn’t have a truck to show then. What he did have was something in common with Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel, the chairman of a Saudi auto distributor who, like Scaringe, also attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Scaringe showed up recommended by MIT contacts, and playing the alumni card worked. After a series of meetings pitching clean-running pickups and SUVs in hotels around Europe, he sealed a deal in early 2012 for $5 million in funding to get Rivian Automotive LLC in gear.