Wall Street appeared underwhelmed by Rivian’s Thursday rollout of its new, more affordable line of SUVs; shares in the Irvine EV maker slipped over the course of the week, with the company’s valuation now hovering around $20 billion, making it OC’s third-most valuable public company (Nasdaq: RIVN).
Questions about expiring EV tax credits, consumer demand and higher-than-promised prices were among the main drags on the automaker’s stock last week.
The upstart’s R2 platform will range from $45,000 to $58,000, depending on performance models. Some R2s will have a range of about 345 miles on a single charge.
Rivian’s initial R1 SUVs and trucks start north of $70,000.
Some features and options for the R2 vehicles have local ties, such as a new exterior color, ‘Catalina Cove.’ Inspired by “the waters that surround Catalina Island, this metallic paint shifts from deep Pacific blues to translucent greens in the light,” the company said.
While navigating Wall Street has been a challenge for Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, Silicon Valley remains enamored with his next-gen technology.
Last week, Rivian industrial robotics spinout Mind Robotics raised $500 million in funding, led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz.
Mind Robotics, based in Palo Alto, is making AI-powered factory robots that, in theory, could perform physical work at a Rivian plant or other production sites.
“As AI enters the physical world, we believe the largest, at-scale application for advanced robotics will be across the industrial sector,” Scaringe said.
Rivian spun out Mind Robotics late last year, shares its technology and data, and retains a major stake in the firm, which now has a valuation of around $2 billion, according to reports.
Notably, $2 billion is the same valuation given to Irvine robotics upstart FieldAI, which has raised over $400 million from Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and others, with most of that funding coming last summer. Field AI, like Mind Robotics, is developing an AI platform for robots to operate autonomously in a variety of settings.
If you’ve noticed an uptick in office demolition projects taking place across OC, prepare yourself; it could get even busier.
Across the U.S., there’s a pipeline of 81 million square feet of office space in line for demolition and conversion to other uses, according to a new report from CBRE. Of that, 9.5 million square feet, or nearly 12% of the national pipeline, is in OC, according to the brokerage’s data.
For OC office conversions, 74% of projects are slated for residential redevelopment, in line with national trends. However, 25% of OC conversion projects are planned for industrial use, compared with just 5% nationally, CBRE said.
The upside for OC landlords: if all that local office space gets knocked down and current tenants are absorbed elsewhere, vacancy levels here could fall to 9.2% from 14.7%, the report said.
There are currently 2.3 million square feet of local office space under conversion. Bigger potential projects on the horizon include Laguna Niguel’s 1-million-square-foot Ziggurat building, which hit the market a week ago.
