Rivian is laying off 6% of its workforce

Electric vehicle maker Rivian is laying off about 6% of its workforce – about 840 employees.

“Over the last six months, the world has dramatically changed with inflation reaching record highs, interest rates rapidly rising and commodity prices continuing to climb — all of which have contributed to the global capital markets tightening,” Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe shared in a companywide email. “We are financially well positioned and our mission is more important than ever, but to fully realize our potential, our strategy must support our sustainable growth as we ramp toward profitability. We need to be able to continue to grow and scale without additional financing in this macro environment. To achieve this, we have simplified our product roadmap and focused on where it is most impactful to deploy capital.”

Last week, Amazon, which invested in Rivian, announced that customers across the US will begin to see custom electric delivery vehicles from Rivian delivering their Amazon packages, with the electric vehicles hitting the road in Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Nashville, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle, and St. Louis, among other cities. This rollout is just the beginning of what is expected to be thousands of Amazon’s custom electric delivery vehicles in more than 100 cities by the end of this year -and 100,000 across the U.S. by 2030.

Aside from manufacturing cars, Rivian also sells car insurance through its in-house insurance agency. The company has a partnership with Nationwide and The Cincinnati Insurance Company.