How to Invest in Tesla EV Competitor Rivian Before they go Public

Rivian

If you are building a stock portfolio of electric vehicle companies than it is highly likely that Tesla (TSLA) holds a large overall percentage of this collection of EV equities. But as the landscape of EV startups continues to populate with more automotive companies entering the arena, investors are eager to own a portion of the next EV powerhouse. Rivian hopes to become that company as they attempt to claim the EV pickup truck market (check out the Top 5 Reasons Rivian Will Succeed in the EV Revolution and our Rivian R1T vs Tesla CyberTruck Side by Side Comparison). While Rivian is currently not a publicly traded company, there are ways to indirectly invest in Rivian before they IPO.

Founded in 2009 by Robert “RJ” Scaringe, Rivian is developing all electric vehicles including the highly anticipated R1T electric pickup truck and R1S electric SUV at their headquarters in Plymouth MI.

Deliveries of the Launch Edition of the R1S are scheduled to begin in August 2021 with a starting price of $77,500. Deliveries of the R1T begin in January 2022 with a starting price of $75,000.

Investing in Rivian

While you may not be able to directly invest in Rivian at this time (as they are not public), there are other creative ways to bet on the companies success. To date, Rivian has received a total funding amount of $5.6 Billion.

Early investors include Amazon (AMZN) who led a $700 Million investment round in February of 2019 and Ford Motor Company (F) who led a $500 Million investment round in April of 2019. This was later followed by 2 successive investment rounds led by T. Rowe Price (TROW) at the end of 2019 and middle of 2020 totaling a massive funding of $3.8 Billion. Yes that is Billion with a ‘B’.

Investing in any of these companies is an indirect way to invest in Rivian as they own significant percentages of the company. In September of 2019 Amazon announced it would purchase 100,000 electric vans from Rivian to assist with package deliveries and expects to deploy 10,000 EVs by 2022 and 100,000 by 2030.

And let’s not forget about Ford. The Ford F-Series currently dominates the pickup truck space with more than 30% market share. The Ford Mach-E is expected to be available in 2021 with a starting price of $43,995. While Ford has struggled in recent history, they seem to be making a stronger push towards EVs than some of their competitors.

While T. Rowe Price has joined the Rivian back team later in the game, they have led the largest funding rounds and certainly have a significant amount of skin in the game. T. Rowe Price has proven to be a smart investment choice since the company going public back in 1986 (especially considering they pay a pretty nice dividend to their investors.

Summary

There is more than one way to invest in electric vehicle companies. In addition to directly investing in EV companies, investors can invest in supporting companies. This includes companies that are funding EV automakers, or companies that produce goods used in electric vehicles. While Rivian is currently not a publicly traded company, a bet on Amazon, Ford, and T. Rowe Price is a bet on Rivian as well.

Investors can also hedge their bets by investing in the supporting market indexes that supply raw materials (such as LIT which is comprised of companies that support Lithium Ion battery production).

So what do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation!