Mind Robotics Hires Doug Field After $1.015 Billion in Three Rounds and No Public Robot
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Mind Robotics Hires Doug Field After $1.015 Billion in Three Rounds and No Public Robot
Rivian's factory-robot spinoff has named the former Ford EV chief as president while disclosing no unit count, headcount, valuation or hardware design.
Mind Robotics, the factory-robot startup RJ Scaringe spun out of Rivian, named Doug Field its president on Oct. 13, announced onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Field will run product, engineering and operations, TechCrunch reported, after raising $1.015 billion across three rounds without showing a robot.
Field left Ford in April 2026 after nearly five years as its chief EV, digital and design officer. He was previously senior vice president of engineering at Tesla during the Model 3 launch, and TechCrunch says he led Apple's Project Titan car effort before that, which Apple cancelled in 2024.
Three rounds, $1.015 billion
Electrek's account lays out the funding in order: a $115 million seed led by Eclipse in late 2025, a $500 million Series A co-led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz in March 2026, and a $400 million round led by Kleiner Perkins in May 2026. Electrek says Reuters reported that last round valued Mind at $3.4 billion; neither outlet got a valuation from the company.
| Round | Date | Amount | Lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | Late 2025 | $115 million | Eclipse |
| Series A | March 2026 | $500 million | Accel, Andreessen Horowitz |
| Third round | May 2026 | $400 million | Kleiner Perkins |
- Seed (late 2025)115 $M
- Series A (March 2026)500 $M
- Third round (May 2026)400 $M
Source: Electrek, Oct. 13, 2026, accessed 2026-10-19
TechCrunch lists Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins and the venture arms of Volkswagen and Salesforce as backers. Rivian held 32.1 percent as of June 2026, according to regulatory filings TechCrunch cites. The three rounds sum to $1.015 billion by The Terminal's arithmetic, which matches TechCrunch's "more than $1 billion."
What Mind says it is building
Electrek's summary is blunt: Mind has not publicly shown a product. It says it is building foundation models and "purpose-built" robot hardware for dexterous manufacturing work, and has not said whether the hardware is humanoid. TechCrunch says the robots will not mimic every part of human biomechanics, unlike Tesla's humanoids.
Rivian is the first customer. TechCrunch quotes the arrangement as "a live, high-volume manufacturing environment for model training and deployment," which is a data pitch. The Terminal has reported that robots have 4,000 public hours of training data against an estimated need of 1 billion, and a working plant is one way to collect more.
TechCrunch lists what is missing: headcount, the number of robots built or deployed, and a valuation. That is the denominator problem. Compare Boston Dynamics, whose Atlas hand and 100,000-a-year target came with a unit goal but no price, and Agility's Digit 5, which at least states 90 minutes of runtime.
Where the sources disagree
The two outlets describe Field's Apple role differently. TechCrunch says he led Project Titan; Electrek says he worked on Apple's car effort. Electrek says Ford folded his EV group into manufacturing in April 2026 when he left.
Scaringe called Field "a remarkable leader with a track record of delivering new technologies in successful products," and Field called AI and robotics one of the most important and difficult engineering challenges of the era, both per Electrek.
What would change this read is a deployment figure: robots on a Rivian line, hours worked, and the share of tasks done without a person stepping in. Neither the funding nor the hire supplies one.
Sources
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