Electric car startup Rivian has announced an Amazon-led $ 700 million financing round. A few days ago, it was already leaked that Amazon and General Motors want to start with minority interests in Rivian.
Rivian and General Motors
So there is already a confirmation for the investment of Amazon. The talks between Rivian and General Motors over an investment have not been finalized, according to Reuters.
Rivian wants to win the race for the first electrically powered pickup in the US market. Specifically, the R1T presented at the LA Auto Show at the end of November is due to be launched in autumn 2020.
What’s been going on with Amazon
Irrespective of this, company founder RJ Scaringe had already stated a while ago that he wanted to work with external companies to develop autonomous driving technologies. Against this background, the cooperation with Amazon absolutely makes sense, because the online giant has only recently participated with a “significant amount” in the second round of financing of the startup Aurora, in which a total of 530 million dollars (467 million euros) were collected. As a result, Amazon, as one of the last tech companies, is demonstratively turning to autonomous driving.