Lifestyle

Rivian is fueled by a powerful force: Jeff Bezos’ desire to spite Elon Musk


And, much less immediately, to that fanboy’s archnemesis Elon Musk.

When the Amazon founder this summer season turned the primary American entrepreneur to hurl himself to the edge of space on his personal personal firm’s rocket, Rivian vehicles shuttled Bezos and his fellow astronauts to and from the West Texas launch website.

The Rivian shuttles through the extensively publicized occasion had been, in fact, strategic product placement by Bezos for his handpicked contender to tackle Tesla. On the time, Rivian was nonetheless a personal firm with no precise merchandise available on the market. However Amazon had made a giant wager on Rivian in 2019, taking a 20% stake within the firm. The famously (or notoriously) calculating Bezos was bringing two of his pet initiatives — Blue Origin and Rivian — onto the worldwide stage on the similar time.

The cherry on prime: It was additionally a giant center finger to Musk.

Bezos and Musk spent a lot of the previous yr yo-yoing between the titles of Richest and Second Richest individual on the planet. Their feud goes again years, centered on their competing house journey ambitions. Bezos’ Blue Origin has been fighting NASA over the company’s determination to contract with Musk’s SpaceX to construct a lunar lander supposed to take people again to the moon.
NASA says moon landing goal pushed to 2025 due to Blue Origin litigation, other factors

Thus far, all of Blue Origin’s efforts to struggle NASA’s determination have fallen flat.

However Rivian’s blockbuster IPO — the strongest debut by a US firm since Fb listed its shares in 2012 — provides Bezos one thing of a win within the ongoing proxy battle he is preventing with Musk.

Two years in the past, Amazon led an funding of $700 million in Rivian and introduced it was ordering 100,000 of its electrical vans. On the time, the EV area was crowded with upstart manufacturers similar to Nikola, Lordstown and Fisker, all of which had been vying to place themselves as the subsequent huge factor. Since then, Rivian has emerged because the heavyweight (helped as a lot by investments from Amazon and Ford as by severe regulatory investigations into would-be rivals Nikola and Lordstown).
Rivian can even thank Musk for fomenting the EV hype that buyers have been getting drunk on for the previous few years. Many analysts say Tesla, with a market cap of round $1 trillion, is wildly overvalued, but it surely retains on climbing. FOMO is a strong power on Wall Road, and those that missed out on Tesla a decade in the past could also be making an attempt to make up for it by shopping for Rivian, a 12-year-old startup that hasn’t but delivered any merchandise to clients and in some way is price greater than Ford (F) and GM (GM).

Whether or not Rivian can dwell as much as the hype is anybody’s guess. For an investor, it is a consolation to know that Rivian has the backing of somebody with pockets as deep and grudges as bitter as Bezos’.

Investing is all the time dangerous. However one factor we will rely on is that uber-rich males will actually purchase total corporations to spite their enemies somewhat than go to remedy.



Source link

news7h

News7h: Update the world's latest breaking news online of the day, breaking news, politics, society today, international mainstream news .Updated news 24/7: Entertainment, Sports...at the World everyday world. Hot news, images, video clips that are updated quickly and reliably

Related Articles

Back to top button