【AI前沿】RJ Scaringe has raised more than $12B across three startups and investors still want more

Investors can’t seem to get enough of RJ Scaringe or his ideas.In less than a decade, the serial entrepreneur best known for his EV company Rivian has raised more than $12.3 billion from venture capital firms, as well as from strategic and institutional investors for his three — and counting — startups. If the latest$400 million raisefor his new venture Mind Robotics is an indicator, investors are still happily piling in.Outsized raises for newly minted startups have become more common in recent years. But those hundred-million-plus seed rounds have generally been reserved for buzzy defense tech startups or AI companies founded by former OpenAI or Anthropic employees.Those supersized seeds certainly weren’t flowing toward something as niche as an electric micromobility startup. And yet in 2025, Scaringe raised $105 million for exactly that — a startup calledAlso, which he founded that same year. The total has since surpassed$300 million, with DoorDash among its backers.Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse and former chief growth officer at Rivian, has spent years watching and learning from Scaringe. His firm is now one of Scaringe’s biggest backers, leading rounds in both Also and Mind Robotics — Scaringe’s industrial AI and robotics startup that he also founded last year.Storytelling and communication are one of his superpowers, according to Behl, who joined Rivian when the company had just a handful of employees.“When RJ explains a certain issue, topic, opportunity, vision, he just has this very unique ability to communicate it so effectively, and it comes across so credible,” Behl said. “He’s not trying to undersell the difficulty or oversell the opportunity, and that’s an art.”Scaringe isn’t the only serial entrepreneur to repeatedly attract massive amounts of capital, but founders who can raise billions across multiple ventures remain rare. A self-professed car enthusiast who earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering from MIT, Scaringe joins a small cadre of entrepreneurs that includes Tesla CEO and SpaceX co-founder Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anduril and Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, and Jack Dorsey, who founded Square (now called Block) and Twitter.The difference, at least in the view of some investors TechCrunch spoke to, is that he is able to separate selling the idea from selling himself. “He is very comfortable and confident in his own personality, and he’s not trying to be an Elon,” Behl said, noting that many have tried to make the comparison over the years.“It’s not about him,” another insider familiar with Scaringe’s companies told TechCrunch. “When you talk to him, he has enthusiasm about the product that is completely external.“Of course, there is confidence and even a little ego, the same source mused, but “it doesn’t weigh on you.” The source also added that Scaringe has a unique ability to make you feel like the most special person in the room — a sentiment others echoed.Giving that kind of undivided attention to an investor, supplier, or exec at a manufacturer is a challenge at the scale Scaringe is attempting. He is running three companies, often traveling between Palo Alto, Irvine, Rivian’s factory in Normal, Illinois, and a second factory soon to open in Georgia. And then there is family – Scaringe has three sons with his ex-wife.Joe Fath, another partner at Eclipse, credits his open-mindedness and collaborative nature for helping him attract investment and juggle these connected, yet disparate businesses.He noted that Scaringe also “has the rare combination of being a truly great engineer while also having an exceptional instinct for product design,” said Fath, who previously worked at a major Rivian backer, T. Rowe Price. “Very few founders can operate at that level technically while also understanding what resonates emotionally with customers – both consumers and commercial buyers. That combination is incredibly uncommon and has clearly been part of what makes Rivian’s products, and now Also and Mind’s, so differentiated.“The pace of Scaringe’s fundraising over the past eight years is particularly notable and doesn’t seem to be slowing.More than $11 billion, and by far the largest slice of VC and strategic capital, went into Rivian — most of it between 2018 and its blockbuster IPO in 2021. That’s a startling timeline, especially considering the company, initially called Mainstream Motors, had existed since 2009. For years, Rivian operated as a small, unknown entity until itsbreakout momentin late 2018 at the Los Angeles Auto Show, when it revealed prototypes of its all-electric R1T truck and R1S SUV.The money soon flowed, and from every direction. In early 2019 and just a couple of months after that reveal, Rivian raised a $700 million funding roundled by Amazon. U.S. automaker Ford would invest $500 million and make plans to collaborate on a since-scrapped future EV program. Cox Automotive contributed$350 million. Rivian would close out the year with a$1.3 billion round—