Mind Robotics Hires Doug Field to Lead Industrial AI Push
Mind Robotics hires former Ford EV chief Doug Field as its new president, marking a major scaling moment for the Rivian-backed industrial AI and robotics venture.
Field will oversee day-to-day operations, including product, engineering, and operations, while Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe remains involved with the company.
Who Is Doug Field?
Field brings a rare resume to the role. He has worked on electric vehicles at Ford and Tesla, led the not-so-secret car project at Apple, and was employee No. 1 at Segway.
At Tesla, he served as senior vice president of engineering and oversaw development of the Model 3, helping get the sedan through what was widely called “production hell.” He later led Apple’s Project Titan, the electric, autonomous car project that was canceled in 2024. Most recently, he spent five years at Ford shaping the automaker’s electric vehicle and technology strategies before leaving in April. His departure was part of a wider reorganization of the automaker’s leadership.
Why Mind Robotics Hires Field Now
Scaringe said onstage that he wanted someone like Field to help run Mind Robotics, so he called him up to ask for a recommendation. The conversation quickly turned into something bigger.
“Him and I then really began digging into how important it is that we really think deeply and very intentionally about how we develop robotics and deploy robotics into our society, into our economy, and we found such alignment in how we thought about this from the overall mission of the business, but even more important, we found really deep alignment just in how we both work and how we build teams,” Scaringe said.
Field framed the challenge in similarly ambitious terms.
“Integrating AI and robotics is one of the most important — and difficult — engineering challenges of our time,” Field said in a statement. “Mind has assembled an exceptional team and has a unique advantage: the ability to deploy and learn inside a real, high-volume factory from day one. I’m thrilled to join RJ in building a team, culture, and technology that will redefine what we can make in America.”
What Mind Robotics Is Building
Mind Robotics is an industrial AI and robotics venture Rivian created last year. The company has already amassed more than $1 billion in backing from Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins, and the venture arms of Volkswagen and Salesforce.
The startup is building a full stack for industrial manufacturing. Its purpose-built robots will run on foundation models, with a goal of automating industrial and manufacturing tasks at scale.
Unlike the humanoid robots being developed by Tesla and others, Scaringe says Mind Robotics won’t attempt to mimic all the biomechanics of a human. The startup is also using Rivian as “a live, high-volume manufacturing environment for model training and deployment,” with Rivian being Mind Robotics’ first customer.
A Growing Portfolio for Scaringe
Mind Robotics is the second company Scaringe created outside of Rivian, following Also, a micromobility play that’s starting with high-end e-bikes. As with Field and Mind Robotics, Scaringe is involved as chairman at Also but has tapped someone else to run the day-to-day: Chris Yu, the former chief product officer of Specialized.
Mind Robotics and Also operate as stand-alone companies, but Rivian has minority stakes in both. The company reported owning about a third of each startup as of June 30, 2026.
What Field’s Hire Signals
Bringing in an executive of Field’s caliber suggests Mind Robotics is preparing to scale up its early operations just one year after its founding. The news positions the venture as one to watch in the intersection of AI, robotics, and American manufacturing.
Field’s experience spans nearly every major chapter of modern transportation technology. From helping launch the Model 3 at Tesla to steering Apple’s autonomous ambitions and then guiding Ford’s EV strategy, he has consistently worked at the frontier of hardware and software integration. That background aligns closely with what Mind Robotics is attempting: combining foundation models with physical robots designed for real factory floors.
The venture’s approach differs from many competitors in the humanoid robotics space. Rather than chasing a machine that looks and moves like a person, Mind Robotics is focused on purpose-built systems that can perform industrial tasks reliably at scale. Using Rivian’s manufacturing operations as a training ground gives the company access to real-world data and deployment conditions that are difficult to replicate in a lab.
With more than $1 billion in backing and a leadership team now anchored by Field, Mind Robotics appears positioned to move from early development into broader deployment. The coming months will reveal how quickly the company can translate its funding and talent into working systems on factory floors.
