Mind Robotics Inc., an industrial robotics startup founded by Rivian Automotive Inc. Chief Executive RJ Scaringe, said today it has raised $400 million in new funding to put more of its artificial intelligence-powered robots onto factory floors.

The company is building robots that can handle the kind of fiddly, judgment-based work on a production line that conventional factory automation has never been good at. Its pitch is a single platform spanning the AI models, the robot hardware itself and the software needed to run fleets of them inside a working plant.

Today’s factory robots are good at jobs where nothing changes from one cycle to the next, like welding the same seam or grabbing a part out of the same bin all day. However, they tend to fall short when conditions shift, meaning that humans are still required in the loop to do work such as routing, wiring harnesses, fitting soft trim and mating connectors where parts arrive slightly out of position. Mind Robotics wants its machines to read the situation in front of them and adjust, rather than follow a prewritten script.

A central piece of the pitch is Mind Robotics’ relationship with Rivian, the electric vehicle maker Scaringe also runs. Rivian is both a shareholder and an operating partner, giving Mind Robotics access to a live, high-volume factory floor for training and deploying its models.

Mind Robotics says its tight loop with Rivian’s plants gives it a continuous flow of real-world manipulation data, which it uses to retrain models and push updates back to robots in operation. The company frames that feedback loop as its core moat, arguing that general-purpose industrial robots will be won by whoever can collect and learn from the most production-grade data, not by whoever builds the flashiest humanoid.

Scaringe founded Mind Robotics in 2025 and continues to lead Rivian, a somewhat unusual setup for the head of a publicly traded automaker. Rivian has been pushing to cut production costs at its Normal, Illinois plant as it ramps the R2 SUV and automation is one of the levers it has flagged repeatedly on earnings calls.

The funding round was led by Kleiner Perkins, with new investors Meritech Capital, Redpoint Ventures, SV Angel, Incharge Capital Partners GmbH, A-Star Capital and Garuda Ventures, along with existing investors Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Eclipse, Prysm Capital LP, Bain Capital Ventures LP and Greenoaks also participating.

The new funding takes the total raised by Mind Robotics to more than $1 billion. The company’s last round was $500 million Series A in March.

Image: Mind Robotics/LinkedIn