Rivian’s founder and CEO RJ Scaringe is taking on a new role at his company as part of a restructuring ahead of next year’s launch of the R2 SUV, which involves a layoff of more than 600 employees.
Scaringe told employees in an email on Thursday that he will be acting as Rivian’s chief marketing officer on an interim basis as the company searches for someone to fill that position for the first time. The head of Rivian’s “marketing experiences” team and the lead of the company’s creative studio will now report directly to Scaringe, according to a copy of the email obtained by TechCrunch.
It’s not clear how many direct reports Scaringe already has — a spokesperson declined to comment — though he told the Decoder podcast last year that it was a “large number.”
The cuts announced Thursday are Rivian’s third set of layoffs this year. The company let go of around 140 employees on its manufacturing team in June, as TechCrunch first reported at the time. Rivian made a similarly-sized cut to its sales and service operation in September. These layoffs follow a more dramatic 10% reduction of Rivian’s workforce in early 2024.
“I am writing to share a difficult update,” Scaringe said in Thursday’s email to Rivian employees. “With the launch of R2 in front of us and the need to profitably scale our business, we have made the very difficult decision to make a number of structural adjustments to our teams. These changes result in a reduction in the size of our team by roughly 4.5%.”
Scaringe said the “changing operating backdrop” — a nod to the loss of the federal EV tax credit, increased tariffs from the Trump administration, and general headwinds against clean energy projects in the U.S. — forced the company to “rethink how we are scaling our go-to-market functions.”
In addition to Scaringe taking point on Rivian’s marketing and creative divisions, the company is also “streamlining” the customer experience, according to the email. Scaringe said Rivian is moving its “vehicle operations” team and integrating it with the company’s service division. Meanwhile, Rivian’s delivery and “mobile operations” will now live inside the sales division.
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These structural changes are being made to “ensure the purchase experience is as seamless as possible with a single touchpoint throughout the entire sales process and to delivery,” he wrote.
