Global Supply Chain Manager
About the job
- The candidate must have built supply chain at a startup and be able to operate without a playbook, move quickly, and own outcomes end-to-end.
- The candidate must have deep sourcing intuition, including an understanding of supplier economics, manufacturing processes, and component-level cost drivers.
- The candidate must have at least 5 years of experience in supply chain, procurement, or sourcing within hardware-intensive industries such as robotics, industrial automation, consumer electronics, aerospace, or automotive.
- The candidate must have direct experience sourcing across multiple commodity categories, including electromechanical components, motors, actuators, printed circuit boards and printed circuit board assemblies, injection-molded parts, machined metals, cameras, sensors, or connectors.
- The candidate must be familiar with manufacturing processes including injection molding, die-casting, metal injection molding, computer numerical control machining, and surface-mount technology assembly.
- The candidate must have strong negotiation skills and a track record of achieving competitive pricing and favorable terms with domestic and international suppliers.
- The candidate must have experience transitioning prototype or new-product-introduction builds to volume production, including tooling qualification and first-article inspection processes.
- The candidate must be able to read and interpret engineering drawings, three-dimensional models, and technical specifications sufficiently to contribute to design reviews and supplier technical discussions.
- Identify, evaluate, and onboard suppliers for brushless direct-current, stepper, and servo motors; custom printed circuit boards and printed circuit board assemblies; injection-molded parts; computer-numerical-control-machined components; cameras; connectors; and cable assemblies.
- Own the full procurement cycle by issuing quotes, negotiating piece pricing and tooling costs, and executing nondisclosure agreements, supply agreements, and purchase orders.
- Build and maintain should-cost models across key commodities to drive cost reduction through competitive bidding, design-for-manufacturability feedback, and supplier consolidation.
- Source components and work closely with machine shops, contract manufacturers, and contract electronics manufacturers to ensure parts are manufactured and shipped to specification and on time.
- Develop and manage the supply chain readiness plan to move from low-volume prototype builds of tens of units to initial production runs of hundreds to thousands of units.
- Track supplier lead times, tooling timelines, and open items across all commodities using program-management tools.
- Manage ongoing supplier performance through partnerships, business reviews, dispute resolution, and corrective action plans.
- Coordinate inbound logistics from domestic and international suppliers and manage inventory levels to balance carrying cost against schedule risk.
- Identify single-source dependencies, long-lead-time components, and geopolitical risks, and develop mitigation strategies including dual-sourcing and alternate qualification plans.
- Work with mechanical, electrical, firmware, and industrial design teams to provide sourcing input on component selection, alternate parts, and make-versus-buy decisions early enough to influence outcomes.
- Experience working with Chinese, Japanese, or Korean suppliers and contract manufacturers is a strong plus.
About the company
Mind Robotics builds industrial AI-powered robotics for manufacturing and other physical-world operations, using production-line data as a data flywheel to improve its robotics systems. Its products combine AI software with robotic hardware that can be deployed on factory floors to automate workflows and continuously learn from real production data. The company leverages Rivian’s backing—ownership stake and board chair—to anchor its automotive manufacturing roots and scale through industrial customers, complemented by a major funding round from Accel and Andreessen Horowitz. The goal is to enable widespread, AI-driven robotic automation at industrial scale across manufacturing and related operations.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Late Stage VC
Total Funding
$1B
Headquarters
Palo Alto, California
Founded
2025
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Mind Robotics raised over $1 billion by May 2026, funding aggressive hiring.
- Open jobs in September 2026 show 27 roles across hardware, software, and operations.
- Rivian-backed deployment lets Mind Robotics test robots on real lines, accelerating product iteration.
What critics are saying
- Rivian controls the best data; any partnership reset cripples Mind Robotics by 2027.
- Industrial robotics commercialization stays hard; missed deployments burn $1 billion before revenue.
- Scaringe runs Rivian, Also, and Mind Robotics; leadership distraction invites execution failures.
What makes Mind Robotics unique
- Rivian gives Mind Robotics live factory data and a first industrial customer.
- RJ Scaringe chairs Mind Robotics, keeping product decisions tied to manufacturing execution.
- The company targets dexterous factory tasks, not commodity humanoid demos, using production workflows.
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6 month growth
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24%2 year growth
11%Mind Robotics, an industrial AI and robotics startup spun out of Rivian last year, has hired former Ford electric vehicle chief Doug Field as president. The news was shared on stage at Disrupt 2026. Field will run product, engineering, and operations day to day. Rivian chief executive officer RJ Scaringe stays involved. Mind Robotics has raised more than $1 billion from Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins, and the venture arms of Volkswagen and Salesforce. It is building purpose-built robots, run on foundation models, to automate factory tasks at scale. Rivian is its first customer and a live manufacturing testbed. Field left Ford in April. He previously led Apple's Project Titan and was a senior vice president of engineering at Tesla.
Mind Robotics, founded by Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, has raised over $1 billion to develop humanoid robots, with its first product expected to launch within a year. The company will operate independently from Rivian, avoiding a partial transformation strategy similar to Tesla's approach. Scaringe believes the industrial labour market opportunity could reach trillions of dollars. Rivian will serve as Mind Robotics' first customer, giving the electric vehicle maker an early technological advantage. The CEO emphasises that humanoid robots will work alongside human employees rather than replace them entirely. Simple tasks will be automated whilst complex operations remain human-operated, helping address manufacturing labour shortages.
RJ Scaringe has raised $12 billion across three startups, and investors are still queueing up. May 16, 2026 - 10:01 am Tl;dr. Rivian's founder is running three companies with $12.3B raised. Mind Robotics just hit $1B at a $3.4B valuation. RJ Scaringe has raised more than $12.3 billion across three startups, and the pace is accelerating. The Rivian founder and CEO, who holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering from MIT, is now simultaneously running an electric vehicle manufacturer, an autonomous micromobility company, and an industrial AI robotics startup, each attracting capital at a speed that would be remarkable for any single venture. The latest data point arrived this week when Mind Robotics, Scaringe's industrial robotics company, closed a $400 million round led by Kleiner Perkins, bringing its total funding to more than $1 billion and its valuation to $3.4 billion. The venture arms of Volkswagen and Salesforce also participated. Mind Robotics was founded in 2025, initially as an internal Rivian project called "Project Synapse," and has raised $115 million in seed funding, $500 million in a Series A in March, and now $400 million more in under two months. The company is building AI-powered robots designed to handle the dexterous, reasoning-intensive manufacturing tasks that conventional factory automation cannot, using Rivian's own production lines as a live training environment. Scaringe's second venture, Also, is an electric micromobility company spun out of Rivian in 2025. It has raised more than $300 million, including a $200 million Series C led by Greenoaks in March that valued the company at over $1 billion. DoorDash invested alongside a multi-year commercial agreement to deploy Also's purpose-built autonomous small EVs for last-mile delivery. The company's product lineup includes a $3,500 e-bike and a four-wheeled cargo EV designed to fit in a bike lane. The overwhelming majority of the $12.3 billion, more than $11 billion, went into Rivian itself, most of it between 2018 and the company's blockbuster IPO in November 2021. Rivian was founded in 2009 as Mainstream Motors and operated in near-obscurity for nearly a decade before revealing its R1T truck and R1S SUV prototypes at the 2018 Los Angeles Auto Show. The money followed quickly: Amazon led a $700 million round in early 2019, Ford invested $500 million, and by the end of that year Rivian had closed four funding rounds. A $2.5 billion raise in July 2020 and a $2.65 billion raise six months later preceded the IPO, which generated nearly $12 billion in gross proceeds at $78 per share and briefly valued the company at more than $100 billion. Today, Rivian's market capitalisation stands at approximately $18.2 billion, a significant decline that reflects the broader struggles of the EV sector. But the company continues to attract major partnerships. Volkswagen has overtaken Amazon as Rivian's largest shareholder through a $5.8 billion software joint venture, and Uber struck a deal worth up to $1.25 billion for up to 50,000 autonomous Rivian R2 robotaxis across 25 cities by 2031. What makes Scaringe unusual is not just the quantity of capital but the breadth. Supersized seed rounds have become more common in recent years, but they have generally gone to defence tech or AI startups founded by former OpenAI or Anthropic employees, not to electric micromobility or industrial robotics. Eclipse, one of Scaringe's biggest backers and a lead investor in both Also and Mind Robotics, credits his combination of engineering depth and product instinct. Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse and a former Rivian executive, described Scaringe's ability to communicate a vision without overselling as "an art." The comparison to other serial entrepreneurs who have raised billions across multiple ventures, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Palmer Luckey, is inevitable but imprecise. Multiple investors told TechCrunch that Scaringe's distinguishing quality is the absence of self-promotion. "It's not about him," one insider said. "When you talk to him, he has enthusiasm about the product that is completely external." Joe Fath, also at Eclipse, noted that Scaringe "has the rare combination of being a truly great engineer while also having an exceptional instinct for product design," a pairing he described as "incredibly uncommon." The question that follows from $12.3 billion across three companies, all run by the same person, is whether Scaringe can sustain the pace. He travels between Palo Alto, Irvine, Rivian's factory in Normal, Illinois, and a second factory under construction in Georgia. Mind Robotics is scaling rapidly, Also is preparing to deliver its first US products in 2026, and Rivian is ramping the R2 SUV while navigating a hostile tariff environment that has seen at least a dozen EV models cancelled or paused this year. The industrial robotics market is attracting capital at an extraordinary rate, with companies from 1X to Unitree to Foundation Industries all raising hundreds of millions for physical AI systems. Mind Robotics' pitch, that it has access to a live high-volume factory floor for training data, gives it a structural advantage most competitors lack. Whether that advantage translates into a durable business depends on execution at a scale that even Scaringe has not yet attempted. Behl framed the question differently. "The big question is, how much can he do?" he said. "That's a question that already assumes he's reaching his limit. The thing is, he doesn't look at it that way."
Mind Robotics today announced a $400 million financing led by Kleiner Perkins, bringing total investment in Mind Robotics to more than $1 billion. This finan...
Mind Robotics, an industrial robotics startup spun out of Rivian, has raised $500 million in a Series A round co-led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz, valuing the company at around $2 billion. The financing follows a $115 million seed round led by Eclipse in late 2025, bringing total funding to $615 million. Founded by Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, who serves as chairman, Mind Robotics uses data from Rivian's electric vehicle factory to train AI-powered industrial robots for greater dexterity and adaptability. The company focuses on traditional factory robot designs rather than humanoid robots, aiming to address tasks requiring human-like physical reasoning that classical robotics cannot handle. Mind Robotics plans to deploy a large number of robots by year-end and may utilise custom silicon Rivian has developed for autonomous vehicles.