One of Rivian Automotive Inc.’s big-name investors, Soros Fund Management LLC, hopes the EV startup will list at a valuation lower than the $80 billion target reported by Bloomberg in August.
“I think my compliance people might yell at me for talking about this, but we think that is a great company,” Dawn Fitzpatrick, Soros’s CEO and investment chief, told Erik Schatzker on Tuesday at the Bloomberg Invest Global Summit in New York. “Candidly, we hope they come public a little bit cheaper than that because we want there to be a long-term value play there.”
A representative for Rivian declined to comment. The size of Soros’s stake in the startup is not known.
Rivian, seen as a potential future rival to industry heavyweight Tesla Inc., disclosed an investment by Soros in July 2020 as part of a $2.5 billion round led by T. Rowe Price. The Irvine, Calif.-based company has raised more than $10.5 billion to date from a list of investors including Amazon.com Inc., Ford Motor Co. and BlackRock Inc.
Last week, Rivian filed for a public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, detailing an almost $1 billion loss in the first half of this year. It has recently started production on its debut vehicle, a battery-electric pickup called R1T. It later plans to build a battery-electric SUV called R1S and has an order from Amazon for 100,000 electric delivery vans.
