Rivian CEO takes top marketing role in shakeup ahead of R2 launch

Rivian 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 includes a More than 600 employees were laid off.

Scaringe told employees in an email Thursday that he will serve as Rivian’s chief marketing officer on an interim basis as the company searches for someone to fill the position for the first time. According to a copy of the email obtained by TechCrunch, Rivian’s head of the “marketing experience” team and head of the company’s creative studio will now report directly to Scaringe.

It’s unclear how many direct reports Scaringe already has — a spokesman declined to comment — though he said The Decoder Podcast Last year it was a “big number”.

The cuts announced Thursday are Rivian’s third set of layoffs this year. The company laid off about 140 employees in its manufacturing team in June, as TechCrunch first reported it at the time. Rivian made the same size cut with her Sales and Service Operations in September. This layoff follows a A more dramatic 10% reduction in Rivian’s workforce Early 2024.

“I am writing to share a difficult update,” Scaringe said Thursday in an email to Rivian employees. “With the launch of R2 ahead of us and the need to scale our business profitably, we have made the very difficult decision to make a number of structural adjustments to our teams. These changes have reduced our team size by approximately 4.5%.”

Scaringe said the “changing operating backdrop” — a nod to the loss of federal EV tax credits, Trump administration tariff hikes and general headwinds against clean energy projects in the U.S. — has forced the company to “rethink how we’re scaling our go-to-market operations.”

In addition to taking Scarring’s points in Rivian’s marketing and creative departments, the company is “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 department. Meanwhile, Rivian’s delivery and “mobile operations” will now be inside the sales department.

These structural changes are being made “to ensure the purchasing experience is as seamless as possible with a single touchpoint across the entire sales process and delivery,” he wrote.