Mind Robotics Names Ex-Ford EV Chief Doug Field President With $1.015 Billion Raised
Hardware / news
Mind Robotics Names Ex-Ford EV Chief Doug Field President With $1.015 Billion Raised
The Rivian-backed robotics company has shown no product and has one named customer, its major shareholder Rivian.
Mind Robotics, the industrial robotics company Rivian chief executive RJ Scaringe created in 2025, named former Ford EV chief Doug Field its president on Oct. 13, giving it a day-to-day operator after raising more than $1 billion.
TechCrunch reported the hire from TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where Scaringe spoke on stage. Field will run product, engineering and operations, and Scaringe stays involved, according to TechCrunch. Neither TechCrunch nor Electrek gives a start date.
Three rounds, $1.015 billion, no shown product
Electrek lists the funding in order: a $115 million seed round 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 the May round valued Mind at $3.4 billion. TechCrunch adds the venture arms of Volkswagen and Salesforce to the investor list.
The three rounds sum to $1.015 billion, which squares with TechCrunch's "over $1 billion." Electrek's reading of the company's position is blunt: Mind has not publicly shown a product, and it has not said whether its hardware is humanoid.
| Round | Date | Lead | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | Late 2025 | Eclipse | $115 million |
| Series A | March 2026 | Accel, Andreessen Horowitz | $500 million |
| Unnamed round | May 2026 | Kleiner Perkins | $400 million |
- Seed (late 2025)115 $M
- Series A (March 2026)500 $M
- May 2026 round400 $M
Source: Electrek, Oct. 13, 2026, accessed 2026-10-15
What Mind says it builds, and what Rivian holds
TechCrunch describes a full stack for industrial manufacturing: purpose-built robots running on foundation models, which are large pretrained models adapted to many tasks. Unlike the humanoid robots Tesla and others are building, TechCrunch reports, Mind will not try to replicate all human biomechanics.
Rivian is the first customer. Mind uses Rivian's factory as "a live, high-volume manufacturing environment for model training and deployment," per TechCrunch's account. Rivian held 32.1 percent of Mind as of June 2026, according to regulatory filings cited by TechCrunch, a stake later funding diluted. The R2 is ramping at the Normal, Illinois plant, Electrek notes.
The denominator matters here. A customer that is also a 32.1 percent shareholder supplies training data and a deployment site, but one buyer is not a market. Until Mind names a second customer, Rivian is the only named buyer, and the companies have given no purchase volume.
Field's record, as the two outlets tell it
Field was Tesla's senior vice president of engineering through the Model 3 launch, ran Apple's car effort in its Special Projects Group, and left Ford in April 2026 after about five years. Electrek gives his last Ford title as chief EV, digital and design officer and says Ford folded his group into manufacturing under chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra instead of hiring a replacement. TechCrunch also lists him as employee No. 1 at Segway.
Electrek calls the hire smart because his career is about turning prototypes into volume products. It also records the other side: Apple's car was cancelled after he left, and Ford's Model e lost more than $5 billion in 2024.
In a statement quoted by TechCrunch, Field said: "Integrating AI and robotics is one of the most important and difficult engineering challenges of our time." Scaringe called him "a remarkable leader with a track record of delivering new technologies in successful products," per Electrek.
The comparison Electrek draws is with Tesla's Optimus, where Elon Musk predicted about 10,000 robots built in 2025 and, in January, said none were doing "useful work." Mind has no stage demos or unit targets, Electrek says. Field's old employer is under a different kind of scrutiny: NHTSA's file on Tesla robotaxis in school zones covers roughly 1,000 vehicles. Factory capital is also moving elsewhere, as in the ₹2,251 crore anchor book for the Zetwerk IPO. The first thing that would change that is a demonstration on a Rivian line with a cycle time attached; the company has announced none.
Sources
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