Rivian’s founder and CEO RJ Scaringe is taking over a brand new function at his firm as a part of a restructuring forward of subsequent 12 months’s launch of the R2 SUV, which includes a layoff of greater than 600 workers.
Scaringe advised workers in an e-mail on Thursday that he will likely be appearing as Rivian’s chief advertising and marketing officer on an interim foundation as the corporate searches for somebody to fill that place for the primary time. The pinnacle of Rivian’s “advertising and marketing experiences” group and the lead of the corporate’s artistic studio will now report on to Scaringe, based on a replica of the e-mail obtained by TechCrunch.
It’s not clear what number of direct reviews Scaringe already has — a spokesperson declined to remark — although he advised the Decoder podcast final 12 months that it was a “massive quantity.”
The cuts introduced Thursday are Rivian’s third set of layoffs this 12 months. The corporate let go of round 140 workers on its manufacturing group in June, as TechCrunch first reported on the time. Rivian made a similarly-sized lower to its sales and service operation in September. These layoffs comply with a extra dramatic 10% discount of Rivian’s workforce in early 2024.
“I’m writing to share a tough replace,” Scaringe stated in Thursday’s e-mail to Rivian workers. “With the launch of R2 in entrance of us and the necessity to profitably scale our enterprise, we’ve got made the very tough determination to make a variety of structural changes to our groups. These modifications lead to a discount within the measurement of our group by roughly 4.5%.”
Scaringe stated the “altering working backdrop” — a nod to the lack of the federal EV tax credit score, elevated tariffs from the Trump administration, and normal headwinds towards clear vitality initiatives within the U.S. — pressured the corporate to “rethink how we’re scaling our go-to-market features.”
Along with Scaringe taking level on Rivian’s advertising and marketing and artistic divisions, the corporate can be “streamlining” the client expertise, based on the e-mail. Scaringe stated Rivian is shifting its “automobile operations” group and integrating it with the corporate’s service division. In the meantime, Rivian’s supply and “cell operations” will now reside contained in the gross sales division.
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These structural modifications are being made to “guarantee the acquisition expertise is as seamless as doable with a single touchpoint all through your entire gross sales course of and to supply,” he wrote.
