Rivian’s CEO takes a different approach than Elon Musk when it comes to humanoid robots

Park City, Utah – Rivian Cars CEO RJ Scaringe envisions a day in the not-too-distant future when the electric car maker’s manufacturing employees will have a new kind of colleague: humanoid robots.

“There will be thousands of people collaborating alongside these robots,” Scaring said during a media event to launch the Rivian R2 EV. “They’ll be taking pictures, hey, check this out! My coworker’s name is Phil, and he’s a robot.”

The 43-year-old car enthusiast and technology entrepreneur created a robotics company last year called Mind Robotics. The company has raised more than $1 billion, according to Scaringe.

Humanoid robots are designed to shape and move like humans. AI algorithms are enhancing their capabilities alongside complex devices such as semiconductors. Proponents say they can be used in various environments, from factories to hospitality and even at home, while others have raised concerns about the devices replacing human jobs.

Scaringe said the company expects to unveil its first product in less than a year, with Rivian being a large minority shareholder and initial customer. Mind currently has nearly 20 open positions ranging from software and hardware engineers to data engineers, according to its website.

Scaringe, who is CEO and acting CEO of Mind, told CNBC that the plan is to keep the robotics company separate from Rivian, rather than the automaker partially shifting to making humanoid robots, such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk does with his company.

“We have a deep relationship, and that’s how we’ve organized it,” Scarring said during an interview. “A big part of structuring the business was to allow me to spend time on both.”

The robotics strategy adds to the story of Scaringe doing things differently than Musk, despite the clear similarities in their companies. There have been enough comparisons that Rivian has been called the “anti-Tesla” while Scarring has been referred to as the “anti-Elon.”

“I would say there’s a lot of alignment there, and I think that’s because I’m obviously biased, but I think they’re right… Self-driving is a super important technology,” Scarring said of Tesla and Rivian. “But in terms of products, in many ways, they couldn’t be more different.”

So far, Rivian and Mind are helping each other, as Musk’s companies also did during the development stages. This includes the merger of Musk’s xAI company with SpaceX ahead of the company’s initial public offering on Friday as well as SpaceX’s purchase of vehicles from Tesla.

Scaring said Rivian would be a “huge beneficiary” of Mind, which uses data from Rivian to train its AI models. Along with Rivian’s equity stake, the automaker will be Mind’s first robotics customer.

“We realized it was a big opportunity that deserved to be our own company,” Scaring said. He said he believes there is a multi-billion dollar addressable market for industrial labor.

Scaringe was visibly excited when speaking with the media about the potential of artificial intelligence and humanoid robots, calling it “one of the most exciting times, probably in human history.”

“A hundred years from now, they will inherit the work we do over the course of our lives, so I think we are very lucky to have survived the birth of artificial intelligence,” Scarring said.

Despite the optimism about humanoid robots, Scaring said he expects the devices to work alongside humans rather than replace them entirely for the foreseeable future, saying it will take “a long time” for vehicle assembly plants to become so-called “dark factories” that can be operated almost entirely by robots.

“What I see happening is that the simplest tasks will be taken over by robots. The more complex tasks will require higher levels of thinking or more complex, more tangible levels of ingenuity.” [will be done by humans]He said.

Scaringe said manufacturers are dealing with “severe labor shortages” from other automakers. Rivian currently has more than 30 open jobs in manufacturing and engineering, according to the company’s website.

Scaringe believes that the need for these workers, as well as the rapid development of artificial intelligence, will mean that human employees will be working alongside a robot called “Phil” much sooner than they might expect.

“The rate at which this is moving is much faster than I’m saying — like an order of magnitude faster — than the average person in the community understands,” he said. “This will be a particularly big challenge in the short term to make the average person realize how quickly models learn and how well they can do almost everything.”

– CNBC Arjun Kharpal She contributed to this report.