Rivian spinoff Mind Robotics hires Doug Field as president

The appointment was announced at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco, according to TechCrunch. Field will handle product, engineering and operations, while Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe remains involved as acting CEO and chair of Mind Robotics. Scaringe said he called Field to ask for a recommendation and the two found alignment on how to develop and deploy robotics. Field left Ford in April after five years leading the automaker’s EV and technology strategies; his departure was part of a broader leadership reorganization.

Field has held senior roles across transportation and technology. He was a vice president of special projects at Apple and the de facto head of Project Titan, the company’s autonomous electric car effort, which was canceled in 2024. He previously served as Apple’s vice president of Mac hardware engineering, left in 2013 to become Tesla’s chief vehicle engineer, helped oversee the Model 3, and left Tesla in 2018 to rejoin Apple. Ford hired him in 2021 to run its electric vehicle and software division, a position he held until earlier this year. TechCrunch reported that he was also employee No. 1 at Segway.

Mind Robotics was founded by Scaringe in 2025 and spun out of Rivian, according to The Verge. It has raised more than $1 billion in financing, with TechCrunch reporting backing from Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins and the venture arms of Volkswagen and Salesforce. The startup is building a full stack for industrial manufacturing, with purpose-built robots that run on foundation models and are intended to automate industrial and manufacturing tasks at scale. Mind Robotics says its robots are being designed with the “dexterity and physical reasoning” required for industrial work and will be capable of working in Rivian’s factories as well as other applications. The Verge reported that the company has not shown any of its robots in public and currently has 32 open positions.

Scaringe said in a statement that Field is a “remarkable leader” with a record of delivering new technologies in successful products. “He has an incredible ability to foster great teams that take on big, complex ideas and deliver products that reset expectations,” Scaringe said. “That’s exactly what Mind needs as we deploy robots into real factories and beyond.”

Field said integrating AI and robotics is one of the most important and difficult engineering challenges of the current era. “Mind has assembled an exceptional team and has a unique advantage: the ability to deploy and learn inside a real, high-volume factory from day one,” he said in a statement. “I’m thrilled to join RJ in building a team, culture, and technology that will redefine what we can make in America.”

Rivian and Mind Robotics remain linked. Rivian owns equity in Mind Robotics and will be the first customer for its robots, and the startup is using AI training data from Rivian. The robots will initially be tested in Rivian’s factories. Scaringe has said he wants to keep the companies separate rather than combine their work as Tesla has done. Rivian reported owning about a third of Mind Robotics as of June 30, 2026. Mind Robotics is the second company Scaringe has created outside Rivian, following Also, a micromobility venture starting with high-end e-bikes; Scaringe is chairman of Also and Chris Yu, former chief product officer of Specialized, runs its daily operations. Rivian also holds a minority stake in Also.

The robotics field is drawing intense investment as physical AI advances, though hardware and software development remain difficult. Tesla and Hyundai are pursuing humanoid robots for factory and warehouse work, while experts say making a robot act like a human is easier than scaling the technology for practical work. TechCrunch reported that Scaringe said Mind Robotics will not attempt to mimic all the biomechanics of a human. The Verge reported that Mind Robotics has not confirmed whether it is working on a humanoid design or something else.