Doug Field previously led electric vehicle initiatives at Ford and Tesla, contributed to Apple’s well-known automotive project, and was Segway’s first employee. Now, this executive is turning his attention to RJ Scaringe, Rivian’s CEO’s latest venture: Mind Robotics.
Mind Robotics is an industrial AI and robotics startup that spun out of Rivian last year. The company has appointed Field as president. Scaringe announced this on the Disrupt 2026 stage, indicating that Mind Robotics, just one year after its founding, is preparing to scale its early operations.
Scaringe will still be involved with Mind Robotics, but Field will be responsible for the company’s day-to-day operations, including product, engineering, and operations.
Mind Robotics has raised over $1 billion in funding from Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins, and the venture arms of Volkswagen and Salesforce. The company is building an end-to-end technology stack for industrial manufacturing, with specially designed robots running on foundational models to enable large-scale automation of industrial and manufacturing tasks.
Unlike humanoid robots being developed by companies like Tesla, Scaringe said Mind Robotics will not attempt to replicate the full biomechanics of humans. The startup is also using Rivian as “a real, high-volume manufacturing environment for model training and deployment,” with Rivian being Mind Robotics’ first customer.
On Tuesday, at the Disrupt stage, Scaringe said he wanted someone like Field to help run Mind Robotics, so he called Field and asked for a recommendation.
“Then, we truly began to delve deeply into the topic, realizing we needed to think very thoroughly and intentionally about how to develop robots and deploy them into our society and economy. We found that we were highly aligned in our views on the overall mission of this business, and more importantly, we shared deep agreement on how we work and how we build teams,” he said.
Field left Ford in April, where he spent five years shaping the automaker’s electric vehicle and technology strategy. His departure is part of Ford’s broader leadership restructuring. Before joining Ford, Field led Apple’s Project Titan—the electric autonomous vehicle initiative that was canceled in 2024. He also served as Senior Vice President of Engineering at Tesla, overseeing the development of the Model 3 and helping steer the sedan out of “production hell.”
Field said in a statement: “Integrating AI and robotics is one of the most important and challenging engineering endeavors of our time. Mind has assembled an outstanding team and possesses a unique advantage: the ability to deploy and learn in real, large-scale factories from day one. I’m excited to join RJ to build the team, culture, and technology that will redefine what we can manufacture in the United States.”
Mind Robotics is the second company spun off by Scaringe from Rivian, with the first being Also, a micro-mobility company that entered the market through high-end electric bicycles. Similar to Field and Mind Robotics, Scaringe serves as chairman of Also but has appointed others to manage day-to-day operations: Chris Yu, former Chief Product Officer at Specialized.
Mind Robotics and Also operate as independent companies, but Rivian holds minority stakes in both. The company reported that, as of June 30, 2026, Rivian owned approximately one-third of each of these startups.