Doug Field, who led engineering on the Tesla Model 3 and later ran Ford’s EV business, is now president of Mind Robotics, the industrial robotics company RJ Scaringe spun out of Rivian last year. He’ll oversee product, engineering and operations alongside RJ, who serves as chairman.
Field’s résumé covers some of the biggest hardware bets in the industry. He was Tesla’s SVP of Engineering through the Model 3 launch, ran Apple’s car project, and spent nearly five years at Ford as chief EV, digital and design officer before leaving in April when Ford folded his EV group into manufacturing.
In Mind’s announcement, RJ said Field has “a track record of delivering new technologies in successful products,” which is what Mind needs as it starts putting robots into factories. Field described AI and robotics as one of the most important and difficult engineering challenges of our time.
Mind has raised more than $1 billion in under a year, starting with a $115 million seed round led by Eclipse, followed by a $500 million Series A in March and a $400 million round led by Kleiner Perkins in May that reportedly valued the company at $3.4 billion. It still hasn’t shown a product publicly, and it hasn’t said whether any of its robots are humanoid.
What Mind does have is Rivian as a shareholder and launch customer, which gives it a working auto plant in Normal to train and deploy robots in while R2 ramps up.
I think hiring someone who lived through the Model 3 ramp tells you RJ wants these robots on the line sooner rather than later.
