Rivian Automotive Inc. is expected to price its initial public offering (IPO) later today, November 9, 2021. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan currently stand as Rivian’s underwriters for the company’s debut. And based on filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Rivian is looking to enter the public markets in a big way — and it is setting its ambitions very high.
Target Valuation
Rivian has disclosed that it is targeting a valuation above $65 billion in its IPO, with shares priced between $72 and $74. Such a valuation is ambitious, as it would make Rivian’s market cap just a bit lower than veterans such as General Motors ($84.82 billion) and Ford Motor Company ($79.65 billion), the latter being a key investor in the truck maker. Similar to fellow electric vehicle maker Tesla, which currently reached a market cap above of over $1 trillion, Rivian’s valuation target is founded on the idea that the company may see a meteoric rise in the coming years.
If Rivian’s shares end up selling at the top of their marketed range, the company could make history as the seventh-biggest US IPO on record, according to Bloomberg. It would also overtake longtime players in the auto segment, such as Japanese carmakers Honda Motor Co., which has a market cap of $53 billion, and French automaker Renault SA, which is valued at a conservative $11 billion.
The Finances So Far
Rivian’s S-1 filing with the SEC has provided a glimpse of the company’s finances so far. Just as expected, and similar to fellow electric vehicle makers that are just starting out, Rivian is currently burning cash, with heavy investments in R&D and high operating costs. This is likely due to the fact that the company is still learning the ropes when it comes to mass-producing its three vehicle offerings, one of which has an order for 100,000 units from Amazon, the world’s premier e-commerce site.
Rivian currently employs over 8,000 people across multiple facilities in Arizona, California, Michigan, Illinois, Vancouver, Canada, and the UK. And as the company approached the production of the R1T pickup truck and R1S SUV, its losses grew. Rivian posted a net loss of $994 million from January to June 2021, more than double the $377 million net loss it posted for the first half of 2020. Rivian’s R&D expenses are also on the rise, with the company spending $683 million in Q1 and Q2 2021. In comparison, its R&D cost for 2020 stood at $766 million. Despite this, Rivian still has about $3.6 billion in cash on its balance sheet.
What Analysts are Saying
Rivian is quite unique among EV startups today because its already has a sure customer in Amazon, which has ordered 100,000 units of an all-electric delivery van. That being said, New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu stated in a note on Monday that Rivian may end up facing a “natural ceiling” of 300,000 to 400,000 units per year, partly due to the price range of its consumer vehicles, the R1T pickup truck and the R1S SUV. The R1T currently starts at $67,500 for its base model, while the R1S starts at $70,000.
“Above $70,000, the global addressable market for Rivian’s SUV and pickup is less than 1.5 million units, and it will be a crowded space,” Ferragu wrote.
Ivan Drury, a senior analyst at Edmunds, highlighted that Rivian may face an uphill climb when ramping its first vehicles, especially considering that the chip crisis is still ongoing. “It’s difficult enough for established automakers, let alone a new one. Couple that with this new issue the entire industry is dealing with, the chip crisis, that just adds another layer of complexity,” Drury noted.
Rivian’s Production Plans
Recent reports have noted that Rivian is currently focusing its resources on delivering the first batch of its Amazon delivery vans. This makes sense considering the volume of orders it has received from the e-commerce giant, but this strategy could also result in the R1T and R1S being ramped at a more deliberate pace. So far, Rivian has noted that it has received just over 55,000 pre-orders for the R1T and R1S. And since starting deliveries of the R1T, the company has only delivered 156 units of the all-electric pickup truck, “nearly all” of them to Rivian employees.
Rivian’s SEC filing has provided a bit more detail about the R1T and R1S’ rather deliberate ramp. According to the document, the company expects to fill its pre-order backlog of approximately 55,400 R1 vehicles by the end of 2023. Previous reports also note that Rivian is expected to deliver the first 10,000 units of its Amazon delivery vans by the end of 2022, with the entire 100,000-unit order being completed by the end of the decade.
Legal Challenges to Date
Similar to other automakers, Rivian is also involved in some legal challenges. Among the more notable ones involve fellow EV maker Tesla, which has filed a suit against Rivian last year over the alleged theft of intellectual property related to recruitment, bonus and compensation plans for sales personnel, and manufacturing project management systems. A later lawsuit from Tesla also alleged that the truck maker was acquiring core technology related to its upcoming 4680 cells, which was deemed by the Silicon Valley-based company as the “most essential element for any electric vehicle.”
More recently, Laura Schwab, who was the first female President in luxury automaker Aston Martin’s history, also filed a suit against Rivian over alleged gender discrimination. Schwab served as Rivian’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing during her tenure with the company. But according to the former Rivian executive, she was routinely excluded from meetings despite her experience in the auto industry, and her warnings about the R1T and R1S’ pricing and public targets were largely ignored. Finally, Schwab noted that she was terminated by Rivian just before it went public, which effectively made her lose “millions of dollars in unvested equity on the eve of the company’s IPO.”
Conclusion
With electric vehicle maker Tesla joining the trillion-dollar club, numerous investors are now looking towards the “next Tesla.” And while not all EV startups have succeeded — hydrogen truck company Nikola is a good cautionary tale — companies like Rivian and Lucid Motors do seem to have the makings of a legitimate, and potentially profitable long-term business. This was something highlighted by Pitchbook senior mobility analyst Asad Hussain, who noted that “Rivian’s premium market valuation reflects its ownership of the entire value chain and freedom to innovate without dealing with stranded assets. Between Rivian and Lucid, the market finally has credible candidates for ‘the next Tesla.”
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a photo of himself standing with the Optimus production team inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, arms crossed amid workers in hard hats and safety vests. The image captures a pivotal industrial shift: the same facility space once dedicated to building Tesla’s flagship Model S sedan and Model X SUV is now home to the company’s humanoid robot manufacturing line.
Walking the Optimus production line in Fremont pic.twitter.com/ABS0tuRibW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2026
Tesla’s Fremont Factory, acquired in 2010 from the former NUMMI joint venture between Toyota and GM, has been the company’s original U.S. manufacturing hub since Model S production began in 2012.
The Model X followed soon thereafter. These premium vehicles offered lower annual volumes, recently around 30,000 combined, compared to the high-volume Model 3 and Model Y lines that continue around the site. Over their combined run, the S and X accounted for roughly 610,000 units.
In late January 2026, during Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Elon Musk announced the end of Model S and Model X production in Q2 2026. The final vehicles rolled off the line in early May. Rather than retooling for another vehicle, Tesla chose to convert the dedicated S/X assembly area into a dedicated Optimus Gen 3 production line.
Model 3 and Y manufacturing remains unaffected. Tesla’s official Fremont Factory page now lists Optimus alongside the 3 and Y as core products.
The conversion was executed with remarkable speed. After production stopped, crews dismantled the existing vehicle line and installed entirely new modular equipment—including lines sourced from Germany and dozens of sub-lines for actuators, batteries, and other components—in roughly four months.
Musk described the timeline as “insanely fast,” noting it would be unprecedented for any other manufacturer. Initial Optimus output is expected to ramp slowly due to the robot’s roughly 10,000 unique parts and the brand-new production processes involved. The Fremont line targets an eventual capacity of 1 million Optimus units per year.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Optimus Development Timeline
- August 19, 2021: Optimus (then called Tesla Bot) formally announced at Tesla’s first AI Day. A concept video showed a person in a suit demonstrating the vision for a general-purpose humanoid capable of dangerous, repetitive, or boring tasks using the same AI architecture as Full Self-Driving.
- 2022: Early prototypes displayed. At the second AI Day in September, semi-functional units demonstrated walking across a stage and basic arm movements
- 2023: September videos showed improved capabilities, including sorting colored blocks, precise limb awareness, and holding a Yoda pose.
- 2024-early 2025: Factory integration videos showed Optimus navigating workspaces and handling objects like battery cells.
- January 2026: Gen 3 mass-production activities began at Fremont, with reports of over 1,000 Gen 3 units already operating inside the factory for real-world learning and AI training
- April 2026: Musk confirms Optimus production on converted Fremont line would begin in late July or August 2026. The Gen 3 reveal, originally eyed for Q1, was pushed closer to production start. A second, much larger Optimus factory at Giga Texas is under construction, with volume production targeted for Summer 2027 and long-term capacity of 10 million units annually
- July 1, 2026: Musk’s on-site visit and team photo confirm the Optimus line is operational and the transition is actively progressing
Tesla positions Optimus as potentially its largest project ever, leveraging vertical integration, AI expertise, and car-like manufacturing know-how to scale humanoid robots first for its own factories and later for broader industrial and consumer use.
The Fremont conversion serves as a critical proving ground for this ambitious new chapter in Tesla’s already-rich history.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12
Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
