Rivian's founder RJ Scaringe just grabbed the marketing reins as the electric truck maker slashes 600 jobs - a 4.5% workforce cut - ahead of its make-or-break R2 SUV launch next year. The interim CMO move signals how critical the mass-market vehicle is for the struggling startup's survival in an increasingly hostile EV landscape.
RJ Scaringe isn't just running Rivian anymore - he's now marketing it too. The electric truck startup's founder and CEO told employees Thursday he's taking over as interim chief marketing officer while the company searches for its first permanent CMO, according to an internal email obtained by TechCrunch.
The leadership shuffle comes with a harsh reality check: Rivian is cutting roughly 600 employees, about 4.5% of its workforce, as it braces for what Scaringe called a "changing operating backdrop." Translation? The federal EV tax credit is gone, Trump-era tariffs are back, and the clean energy honeymoon is officially over.
"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," Scaringe wrote in the email. It's corporate speak for 'we're running out of runway and the R2 better work.'
This marks Rivian's third round of layoffs this year, underscoring just how brutal the EV market has become for anyone not named Tesla. The company went public in 2021 with a valuation that briefly topped $100 billion, but reality hit hard as production struggles and cash burn became impossible to ignore.
The R2 isn't just another product launch for Rivian - it's existential. While the company's R1T pickup and R1S SUV target the luxury segment with price tags starting around $75,000, the R2 aims for the mass market with an expected starting price under $45,000. That's Tesla Model Y territory, where real volume lives.
Scaringe's decision to personally oversee marketing suggests he knows exactly what's at stake. The CEO already manages what he described as a "large number" of direct reports, according to a Decoder podcast interview last year. Now he's adding the heads of Rivian's "marketing experiences" team and creative studio to that list.
But the restructuring goes deeper than just marketing. Rivian is consolidating its entire customer-facing operations, moving vehicle operations into the service division and folding delivery and mobile operations into sales. The goal, Scaringe explained, is creating "a single touchpoint throughout the entire sales process and to delivery."
