Electric vehicle maker Rivian files to go public

American electric vehicle maker, Rivian, has officially filed its initial public offering (IPO) Friday on Nasdaq, following a confidential filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier on in August.  

The EV company, which is vouched for by Ford and Amazon, wrote in the filing that they have not generated substantial revenues due to being stuck in a developmental stage, as vehicle production and deliveries began in September 2021. 

“Rivian had a net loss of $994 million on revenue of zero for the first half of 2021. Its net loss for full year 2020 was $1.02 billion, the filing shows. The company expects to trade under the ticker symbol RIVN,” as stated by The Verge. 

Over 48,000 pre-orders of Rivian’s two available vehicles, R1T and R1S, have been made in U.S. and Canada. However, the company’s only revenue goes down to the refundable deposit of $1,000 customers paid during the pre-order. 

The U.S. EV maker is hoping to raise its revenues with the help of retail giant Amazon, as the filing notes, “in the near term, we expect that a significant portion of our revenue will be from Amazon Logistics.”  

Currently, Amazon and Ford each own above than 5 percent of Rivian with Amazon’s senior VP, Peter Krawiec, also part of Rivian’s board of directors. 

In 2019, Rivian struck an agreement with Amazon for the sole purpose of “designing, developing, manufacturing, and supplying electric delivery vans for use in Amazon’s last-mile delivery operations.” 

Amazon enjoys exclusive rights to Rivian’s electric delivery vans, but the agreement is only valid for four years. According to The Verge, “the company says it doesn’t expect to ship its electric delivery vans until December as well.”