A humanoid industrial robot is displayed at the humanoid robot data training center in Shougang Park on March 27, 2025 in Beijing, China.
VCG | China News Service | fake images
PARK CITY, Utah— Rivian Automotive CEO RJ Scaringe imagines a day in the not-too-distant future when the electric vehicle maker's manufacturing employees will have a new kind of colleague: humanoid robots.
“There will be thousands of people collaborating alongside these robots. They will take pictures, 'Hey, look at this! My coworker's name is Phil and he's a robot,'” Scaringe said during a media event for the launch of the Rivian R2 EV.
The 43-year-old tech entrepreneur and automotive enthusiast founded a robotics company last year called Mind Robotics. The company has raised more than $1 billion, according to Scaringe.
Humanoid robots are designed to look and move like people. Artificial intelligence algorithms enhance their capabilities along with complex hardware such as semiconductors. Proponents say they could be used in a variety of settings, from factories to hospitality and even the home, while others have raised concerns about the devices replacing human jobs.
Scaringe said the company hopes to reveal its first product in less than a year, with Rivian as a large minority shareholder and launch customer. Mind currently has approximately 20 open positions ranging from software and hardware engineers to data architects, according to its website.
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, who founded Mind Robotics late last year, speaks to the media on June 3, 2026 during a launch event for the R2 electric SUV in Utah.
Michael Wayland/CNBC
Scaringe, Mind's executive chairman and interim CEO, told CNBC that the plan is to keep the robotics company separate from Rivian, rather than have the automaker partially shift to making humanoid robots, such as tesla What CEO Elon Musk is doing with his company.
“We have a deep relationship and that's how we structured it,” Scaringe said during an interview. “A big part of structuring the business was allowing me to spend time doing both.”
The robotics strategy adds to the narrative that Scaringe does things differently from Musk, despite the obvious similarities between their companies. There have been enough comparisons that Rivian has even been called the “anti-Tesla” and Scaringe has been called 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…that autonomy is a super important technology,” Scaringe 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, just as Musk's companies have also done during the development phases. That includes the merger of Musk's xAI company with SpaceX ahead of the company's record initial public offering on Friday, as well as SpaceX's purchase of Tesla vehicles.
Scaringe said Rivian will be a “big beneficiary” of Mind, which uses Rivian data to train its AI models. Along with Rivian's equity stake, the automaker will be Mind's first customer for robots.
“We realized it was such a big opportunity that we deserved to have our own company,” Scaringe said. He said he believes there is a total multi-billion dollar market for industrial labor.
A Tesla Optimus robot hands out candy in front of the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, U.S., on Monday, October 27, 2025.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | fake images
Scaringe was visibly excited when he spoke to the media about the potential of AI and humanoid robotics, calling it “one of the most exciting moments, perhaps in human history.”
“A hundred years from now, they will inherit the work that we do throughout our lives, so I think we are very fortunate to be able to be alive at the birth of AI,” Scaringe said.
Despite optimism for humanoid robots, Scaringe said he expects the devices to work alongside humans rather than completely replacing them for the foreseeable future, and said it takes “a long time” for vehicle assembly plants to become so-called “dark factories” that can be run almost entirely by robots.
“What I see happening is that simpler tasks will be taken over by robots. More complex tasks that require higher levels of reasoning or more complex, tactile levels of dexterity [will be done by humans]”, said.
Scaringe said manufacturers are dealing with an “extreme lack of labor” from other automakers. Rivian currently has more than 30 open jobs in manufacturing and engineering, according to the company's website.
Scaringe believes the need for these workers, as well as the rapid development of AI, will mean that human employees will be working alongside a robot named “Phil” much sooner than they expected.
“The pace at which this is moving is much faster than I would say, like an order of magnitude faster, than the average person in society understands,” he said. “It will be a particularly big challenge in the short term to get the average person… to realize how quickly models learn and how capable they are of doing almost anything.”
-CNBC Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.
