Electric pickup truck maker Rivian aims for $50 billion IPO

– Feb. 10th 2021 1:28 pm ET

Electric pickup truck maker Rivian is said to be looking at an IPO to be publicly traded later this year at $50 billion.

EV SPAC Frenzy

Over the last few months, there has been a strong trend of electric vehicle companies going public through reverse merger SPAC deals.

Fisker, Arrival, Lion Electric, Lordstown Motors, Proterra, Faraday Future, and others have all completed or announced SPAC deals.

The trend started amid Tesla having incredible performance on the stock market and other EV companies attempting to ride the momentum and raise more money.

While some of the deals have been criticized due to the fact that several of those companies have little to no revenue and/or not close to achieving production, it has also helped to funnel more money into the transition to electric vehicles.

Rivian going to the good old way

Rivian is one of the few EV companies that didn’t jump of the SPAC bandwagon.

The main reason is that they have no issue raising money privately.

In February 2019, Rivian received a $700 million round of funding led by Amazon, and Ford invested $500 million in the electric pickup startup just two months later.

The startup also added Cox Automotive as an investor with a $350 million round in September. It topped off its 2019 with a massive $1.3 billion round of funding in December.

In 2020, the company went back to the bank and managed to raise another $2.5 billion from existing investors and also T. Rowe Price Associates, an important investor in Tesla.

They started 2021 strong with another $2.6 billion financing round closing last month.

Now, Bloomberg reports that Rivian is eyeing an IPO later this year at a valuation of about $50 billion:

“Rivian Automotive Inc., the electric-vehicle startup backed by Amazon.com Inc. and Ford Motor Co., is looking to go public as soon as September at a valuation of about $50 billion and perhaps more, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Unlike the previously mentioned companies, Rivian would be going the traditional IPO way instead of doing a SPAC deal.

Also, with its first deliveries planned for June, the automaker would wait until having some revenue before going public.

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