Rivian's Mind Robotics Taps Doug Field to Lead Industrial AI Push

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe’s industrial AI and robotics spinoff, Mind Robotics, has named veteran automotive and consumer-tech executive Doug Field as its president. The appointment was announced on stage during TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, roughly a year after the venture was founded, and signals that the company is preparing to move past its early operational phase.

Field brings an unusually broad résumé to the role. He spent five years at Ford steering the automaker’s electric vehicle and technology strategy before departing in April amid a wider leadership reshuffle. Before that, he ran Apple’s secretive Project Titan car initiative, the electric and autonomous program the company shelved in 2024. He also logged time as Tesla’s senior vice president of engineering, where he was responsible for the Model 3 and helped push that sedan through the production challenges that nearly derailed its launch. Earlier still, he was the first employee at Segway.

At Mind Robotics, Field will own the day-to-day business — product, engineering, and operations — while Scaringe stays involved at a higher level. Scaringe recounted calling Field initially for a recommendation but then finding deep alignment on how robots should be developed and introduced into the economy, and on how the two of them build teams.

The company is constructing a full technology stack for industrial manufacturing, pairing purpose-built robots with foundation models so that factory and industrial tasks can be automated at scale. It has already drawn more than $1 billion in backing from investors including Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins, and the venture arms of Volkswagen and Salesforce. Scaringe has been explicit that Mind Robotics is not chasing the humanoid approach favored by Tesla and others; rather than replicating human biomechanics, it is designing robots around the tasks they need to perform. Rivian itself serves as both investor and first customer, giving Mind Robotics a live, high-volume production environment for training and deploying its models.

Mind Robotics is Scaringe’s second venture outside Rivian, following Also, a micromobility startup that began with premium e-bikes and is run day-to-day by former Specialized product chief Chris Yu, with Scaringe serving as chairman. Both companies operate independently, though Rivian held roughly a one-third stake in each as of June 30, 2026. In a statement, Field called the integration of AI and robotics one of the most important and difficult engineering challenges of the current era, adding that Mind’s edge lies in being able to learn inside a real, high-volume factory from its first day.