Rivian’s CEO takes a different approach than Elon Musk’s for humanoid robots

PARK CITY, Utah — Rivian Automotive CEO RJ Scaringe envisions a day in the not-too-distant future when workers manufacturing electric cars will have a new kind of colleague: humanoid robots.

“There’s going to be thousands of people who are going to be interacting with these robots. They’re going to be taking pictures, ‘Hey, check this out! My partner’s name is Phil, and he’s a robot,” said Scaringe during the Rivian R2 EV launch press event.

The 43-year-old car enthusiast and tech entrepreneur started a robotics company last year called Mind Robotics. The company has raised more than $1 billion, according to Scaringe.

Humanoid robots are designed to shape and move like humans. Artificial intelligence algorithms power their capabilities and complex hardware such as semiconductors. Supporters say they can be used in a variety of settings, from factories to lobbies and even homes, while others have expressed concern about machines replacing human jobs.

Scaringe said the company expects to launch its first product in less than a year, with Rivian as the majority shareholder and presenting customer. Mind currently has about 20 open positions ranging from software and hardware engineers to data scientists, according to its website.

Scaringe, Mind’s executive chairman and acting CEO, told CNBC that the plan is to keep the robotics company separate from Rivian, instead of the automaker slowly shifting toward humanoid robots. Tesla CEO Elon Musk does with his company.

“We have a deep relationship, and it was really the way we planned it,” Scaringe said during the interview. “A big part of planning the business was allowing me to be able to spend time on both.”

The robotics strategy adds to the narrative of Scaringe doing things differently than Musk, despite the obvious similarities in their companies. There have been enough comparisons that Rivian has 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 it’s because, obviously, I’m biased, but I think they’re right … that autonomy is a very important technology,” Scaringe said of Tesla and Rivian. “But in terms of products, they, in many ways, couldn’t be more different.”

So far Rivian and Mind are helping each other, though, as Musk’s companies have also done during the development stages. That includes Musk’s xAI company teaming up with SpaceX ahead of the company’s first public filing on Friday and buying SpaceX vehicles from Tesla.

Scaringe said Rivian will be a “huge beneficiary” of Mind, which uses data from Rivian to train its AI models. Along with Rivian’s equity stake, the automaker will be Mind’s first robotics customer.

“We saw that it is such a great opportunity to be its company,” said Scaringe. He said he believes there is a multi-billion dollar market for industrial workers.

Scaringe seemed excited when he spoke to the media about the potential of AI and humanoid robots, calling it “one of the most exciting times, perhaps in human history.”

“A hundred years from now, they’ll be inheriting the work we’ve done throughout our lives, so I think we’re lucky to be alive when AI was born,” Scaringe said.

Despite the hope of humanoid robots, Scaringe said he expects the devices to work alongside humans rather than completely replace them in the foreseeable future, saying it will take “a long time” for car assembly plants to become so-called “dark industries” that could be run almost entirely by robots.

“What I see happening are very simple tasks that are going to be taken over by robots. Complex tasks that require high levels of thinking or complex, high-touch levels [will be done by humans],” he said.

Scaringe said manufacturers are facing a “significant labor shortage,” from other automakers. Rivian currently has more than 30 open manufacturing and engineering jobs, according to the company’s website.

The need for such workers, and the rapid development of AI, Scaringe believes, will mean that human workers will be working alongside a robot called “Phil” much sooner than they might expect.

“The rate at which this is going is much faster than I would say – like an order of magnitude faster – than the average person in the public understands,” he said. “That’s going to be the biggest challenge in the short term for the average person … to see how quickly models learn and how good they are at doing almost everything.”

– CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.