Rivian said it’s laying off hundreds of employees, or less than 2% of its workforce, as part of restructuring efforts aimed at making the company profitable for the first time.
The layoffs come one week after the Irvine-based electric vehicle maker began deliveries of its highly anticipated R2 SUV.
The company is hoping that the R2, which is currently only available as a performance version for $57,990, could attract more customers with its lower price tag.
But industry analysts said the performance R2 is still not affordable for many Americans, and investors reacted with disappointment to the first deliveries June 9, with shares falling 7% that day.
The company said a standard version of the R2 starting at $44,990 will become available next year.
The layoffs took effect on Monday and affected Rivian’s service and customer organization employees, including sales and marketing teams. Rivian employed 15,232 people as of December.
“We recently restructured a handful of teams within Rivian as we work to profitably scale our business,” a company spokesperson said.
The laid off employees have been provided with severance packages and are encouraged to apply for other open roles with Rivian, the company said.
Rivian may be trying to reach profitability by saving money on labor, said Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds.
“You have to wonder to what degree they do plan on replacing those people with some level of AI and automation,” he said.
Rivian, which is pouring money into autonomous vehicle efforts including a robotaxi partnership with Uber, has struggled to turn a profit with its luxury EVs.
The layoffs are likely not directly tied to recent reception of the R2, auto analyst Brian Moody said.
“I think that it’s declining interest in new electric cars, and maybe declining interest in expensive things,” he said. “We can surmise that [layoff] process began long before the R2 launch.”
The company lost $3.6 billion last year and recently said it is no longer expecting to meet its 2027 adjusted core profit target.
There has been a broad cooling of the EV market. Major automakers including Honda and Ford have cut back their EV options as excitement for the vehicles has fallen under the Trump administration. A $7,500 EV tax credit for new vehicles expired in September.
Rivian cut 4.5% of its workforce in October, or more than 600 jobs, following the expiration of the credit. The company also laid off about 200 employees in September.
In a recent turnaround, Rivian surprised the market with strong earnings results in February, reporting gross profits for 2025 of $144 million compared with a net loss in 2024 of $1.2 billion. Gross profit is revenue without subtracting the cost of production expenses.
In its earnings release, Rivian credited the swing to “strong software and services performance, higher average selling prices, and reductions in cost per vehicle.”
“The company has never posted a full year’s worth of profit, and this is the one lever they can pull to rightsize things,” Drury said.
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