Robert "RJ" Scaringe

RJ Scaringe was born in 1983 in Rockledge, Florida, and developed an early interest in cars working at a Porsche restoration shop as a teenager, with the goal of building his own vehicle brand by age eighteen. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, then a PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT, where he worked at the Sloan Automotive Laboratory converting a 1976 Porsche into an electric vehicle. One day after finishing his PhD in 2009, at age 26, Scaringe founded the company that would become Rivian -- initially called Mainstream Motors -- funded in part by second mortgages he and his engineer father each took out. By 2019, before selling a single vehicle, Scaringe had raised $1.7 billion, including $700 million from Amazon and $500 million from Ford, and secured Amazon's order for 100,000 electric delivery vans, the largest single commercial-EV order ever placed.

RJ Scaringe was born in 1983 in Rockledge, Florida, and developed an early interest in cars working at a Porsche restoration shop as a teenager, with the goal of building his own vehicle brand by age eighteen. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, then a PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT, where he worked at the Sloan Automotive Laboratory converting a 1976 Porsche into an electric vehicle. One day after finishing his PhD in 2009, at age 26, Scaringe founded the company that would become Rivian -- initially called Mainstream Motors -- funded in part by second mortgages he and his engineer father each took out. By 2019, before selling a single vehicle, Scaringe had raised $1.7 billion, including $700 million from Amazon and $500 million from Ford, and secured Amazon's order for 100,000 electric delivery vans, the largest single commercial-EV order ever placed.