Building a company is hard. But building one that also designs, manufactures, and delivers hardware at scale, from a factory floor, with supply chain concerns galore is another order of difficulty. And Rivian’s CEO RJ Scaringe is speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 to detail that journey and the lessons it’s bestowed.
Rivian sits at the intersection of AI, software, robotics, manufacturing, and transportation. And Scaringe has spent the better part of two decades proving that intersection isn’t just survivable. He also thinks it’s about to become much more crowded.
Scaringe’s Disrupt Stage session is just one of many big conversations happening at Disrupt this year, running October 13-15 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Check out the programming that’s been announced so far here, and if you don’t already have a ticket, lock in yours before our next price increase on August 22.
What Scaringe brings to the Disrupt Stage
Rivian has begun rolling out the R2, the roughly $58,000 SUV that Scaringe is counting on to do what the pricier R1T and R1S didn’t: expand Rivian beyond the niche market. He’s called it “maybe the most important thing we’ve launched to date” amid slowing demand for costlier EVs and mounting competitive pressure, especially from lower-cost Chinese EV manufacturers.
