Doug Field is taking over the daily running of Mind Robotics, Rivian’s industrial AI and robotics spinoff. Rivian’s production lines will be the startup’s first customer site, as well as a working factory where it can train and deploy its models.
Mind Robotics has appointed Field as president. RJ Scaringe, Rivian’s CEO, will stay involved, while Field oversees product, engineering, and operations. The appointment was announced at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, held October 13-15 in San Francisco. Founded one year ago, Mind Robotics is now preparing to expand its early operations.
The company is developing a full stack for industrial manufacturing. Its purpose-built robots will use foundation models to automate industrial and manufacturing work at scale. Mind Robotics has secured more than $1 billion from Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins, and the venture arms of Volkswagen and Salesforce.
Scaringe says the company’s approach differs from humanoid robot projects at Tesla and elsewhere that seek to reproduce human biomechanics. Rivian is Mind Robotics’ first customer and will serve as “a live, high-volume manufacturing environment for model training and deployment.” The factory will give the startup a place to put its systems to work and learn from them.
Scaringe said he was looking for someone like Field to help lead Mind Robotics, so he contacted him for a recommendation. Their conversations turned to how robotics should be developed and introduced into society and the economy. “Him and I then really began digging into how important it is that we really think deeply and very intentionally about how we develop robotics and deploy robotics into our society, into our economy, and we found such alignment in how we thought about this from the overall mission of the business, but even more important, we found really deep alignment just in how we both work and how we build teams,” he said on the Disrupt Stage Tuesday.
Field’s career includes work on major automotive and technology projects. He was Segway’s employee No. 1, led Apple’s Project Titan electric and autonomous car effort until its cancellation in 2024, and later served as Tesla’s senior vice president of engineering. There, he oversaw the Model 3’s development and helped the sedan through “production hell.” In April, he left Ford after five years working on its electric vehicle and technology strategies. His exit came as part of a broader leadership reorganization.
“Integrating AI and robotics is one of the most important – and difficult – engineering challenges of our time,” Field said in a statement. “Mind has assembled an exceptional team and has a unique advantage: the ability to deploy and learn inside a real, high-volume factory from day one. I’m thrilled to join RJ in building a team, culture, and technology that will redefine what we can make in America.”
Mind Robotics is the second Rivian spinoff founded by Scaringe. The first, Also, is a micromobility company whose initial products are high-end e-bikes. Scaringe serves as its chairman, and Chris Yu, formerly Specialized’s chief product officer, manages its day-to-day operations.
Both Mind Robotics and Also are independent companies, with Rivian holding minority stakes in each. Rivian reported that it owned about a third of both startups as of June 30, 2026.
