Deal of the week Rivian! Late Friday, Rivian made its IPO filing public and released its S-1, which is perhaps my favorite document that exists in the world. After cranking out the breaking news story, Alex Wilhelm and I took the first deeper look at the S-1 and came up with seven takeaways; it’s a TechCrunch+ article (yes, it’s no longer called Extra Crunch), but I pushed the paywall down a skosh. I have since spent a bit more time with it, plus received a few friendly texts and emails from others who have spotted interesting nuggets. Rivian has not yet set terms for the IPO, so we don’t have that. But there are plenty of other items to consider. I will highlight just a couple of them. First up, Rivian outlined a number of future businesses beyond the traditional automotive play of making money from assembling, selling and financing vehicles. This is a route that even the big legacy automakers are aiming for. The difference is that Rivian is doing this from the beginning. Unsurprisingly, it plans to sell a variety of vehicle variants that hit different price points. That likely means cheaper vehicles that fall below its current range of $67,000 to $75,000-priced EVs. After an initial focus on the U.S. and Canadian markets, it plans to enter Western European markets in the near-term, followed by major Asian-Pacific markets. And to support those sales, Rivian plans to localize production — that means more factories. Another obvious but important growth area is Rivian’s plan to to offer integrated hardware such as charging, generation, and storage as well as software-based energy management solutions in the residential, industrial, and commercial markets. The company said in its S-1 that it plans to build multiple vehicles within the consumer and commercial sectors. That commercial sector is interesting to me, especially after I noticed this little item further down, where Rivian says its believes it “will become the largest centrally managed EV fleet,” allowing the company “to unlock future service offerings, including autonomous mobility-as-a-service for the movement of people and goods.“ Next up, Amazon. As we mentioned in our Friday article, there are 81 mentions of Amazon in the Rivian S-1 filing. The number is high as Amazon is both an investor in the company, and a customer. Per the filing, Amazon owns at least 5% of Rivian, though the final number is not yet available. Ford also has a stake greater than 5%, along with a number of investors. But past investment, Rivian’s commercial fleet is largely designed with Amazon in mind. Which makes sense as the American e-commerce giant is expected to purchase some 100,000 vehicles from the company. While, Rivian notes that certain aspects of the commercial electric vans (EDV) design and styling will remain exclusive to Amazon, the partnership is not. Under the terms, Rivian will exclusively provide last-mile delivery vehicles to Amazon’s logistics unit the fourth anniversary of the “Initial Delivery Date.” I interpret that initial delivery date as December 2021, which is when Rivian will deliver 10 production ready vans. The terms also say that between the fourth anniversary to the sixth anniversary of the Initial Delivery Date, Amazon has a right of first refusal to purchase last mile delivery vehicles that Rivian produces. And finally, Ford, which as I noted earlier holds more than 5% of Rivian stock. Two items pop out — one of which is a courtesy of an eagle-eyed reader. Rivian and Ford (specifically its Troy Design and Manufacturing subsidiary) reached a deal in April 2019 for the development, production and supply of all prototype and pre-production “bodies in white” vehicles across the R1T, R1S, and EDV vehicle programs. This means that Ford produced Rivian’s early prototype builds since 2019. Rivian said that it stop purchasing from Troy Design and will stamp and assemble its own “BIWs” (bodies in white) once its Normal, Illinois factory advances to steady-state vehicle production. Rivian paid Ford $8 million in 2019 and $66 million in 2020 for this service. And lastly (thanks for hanging in there) … despite Ford’s stock position and relationship with Rivian, it no longer has any representatives on its board of directors. Joe Hinrichs was on Rivian’s board until 2020, when he abruptly left Ford. Alexandra Ford English, Bill Ford’s daughter, was appointed to Rivian’s board in May 2020, presumably to fill Hinrichs’ vacancy, but stepped down in May 2021. Meanwhile, Amazon and Cox Automotive still have spots on the board. Let’s turn briefly to another potentially big deal: Polestar. The company reached an agreement to go public via special purpose acquisition with Gores Guggenheim Inc., The SPAC deal would give the combined company a valuation of $20 billion. Once the merger closes, the combined company will be held by a new public company named Polestar Automotive Holding UK Limited. The company is expected to be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “PSNY.” Polestar falls under Volvo Car Group’s electric performance brand, but both Polestar and Volvo are owned by Chinese car maker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. With this announcement, Polestar joins a mass of EV makers that will have gone public via SPAC, including Arrival, Canoo, Fisker, Lordstown Motors and Lucid Group. Rivian is the one EV maker outlier that is taking the traditional IPO route. Other deals that got my attention this week … AutoLeap, an auto repair software company, raised $18 million in a Series A round led by Bain Capital Ventures, with repeat participation from Threshold Ventures, which led AutoLeap’s $5 million Seed round in September 2020. Contemporary Amperex Technology, China’s battery-making giant known as CATL, agreed to acquire Vancouver, Canada-based Millennial Lithium in an all-stock cash deal valued at CAD$377 million, or $297 million. Energize Ventures, an early and growth-stage venture fund, closed its second fund with total capital commitments of $330 million. Fund II will be used to help scale and commercialize software across renewable energy, mobility, cybersecurity, battery storage, critical infrastructure and climate resiliency. The fund is backed by anchor investors such as Invenergy, CDPQ, SE Ventures, GE Renewable Energy and Hannon Armstrong. Credit Suisse, Xcel Energy, American Electric Power and Equinor Ventures also participated. NASA picked GE Aviation and MagniX to develop electric propulsion technologies for aircraft, with the aim of introducing this tech to U.S. aviation fleets by 2035. The awards, granted under the agency’s Electric Powertrain Flight Demonstration (EPFD) program, have a combined value of $253.4 million. Of that, $179 million was awarded to GE Aviation, with MagniX receiving $74.3 million. Ninja Van, the Singapore-based logistics company, raised $578 million and it could be about 18 months before it taps public markets for an IPO, Reuters reported. Alibaba Group joined as an investor in its late stage funding round. Existing investors include European parcel delivery network GeoPost/DPDgroup, Monk’s Hill Ventures and Facebook Inc. co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital Group. Ralf Spath, who was CEO of Jaguar Land Rover until 2020, is leading a SPAC called Pegasus Pegasus Digital Mobility Acquisition that filed for an IPO. Swiggy, the Indian food delivery startup, is in talks to raise more than $500 million in a new financing round that could value it at over $10 billion, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Atlanta-headquartered Invesco is in talks to lead — or co-lead — the new financing round in the Bangalore-based startup, which counts SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Falcon Edge Capital and Prosus Ventures among its existing investors. Toyota subsidiary Woven Planet Holdings has made its third acquisition in less than a year in its bid to invest in, develop and eventually bring future-of-transportation technologies like automated driving to market. This time, the company has acquired Renovo Motors, the automotive operating system developer based in Silicon Valley. Terms of the deal, which has closed, were not disclosed. |
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