Mind Robotics, an industrial robotics startup spun out by Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, has appointed Doug Field as president. Field, who led the Tesla Model 3 program and Ford's electric-vehicle business, will oversee product, engineering and operations with Scaringe.

Electrek reported on Oct. 13 that the appointment is drawing attention because it suggests Mind Robotics is shifting its focus to deploying robots in manufacturing after rapidly raising large funding. Mind Robotics raised more than $1 billion in less than a year since its launch. Rivian is a major shareholder and the company's first customer.

Field led the Model 3 launch as Tesla's senior vice president of engineering. He later took charge of Apple's car project and Ford's electric vehicle, digital and design organization. Ford integrated its EV organization into its manufacturing division after Field left, and about 5 months later he chose Mind Robotics as his new workplace.

Scaringe called Field an "excellent leader" with a track record of turning new technology into successful products. He said Field is the person Mind needs now, as it deploys robots at real factories and other sites. Field called the combination of artificial intelligence and robotics "one of the most important and most difficult engineering challenges of our time."

Mind Robotics has also moved quickly to raise funds. It received a $115 million seed investment led by Eclipse at the end of 2025. It then raised a $500 million Series A co-led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz in March 2026, and in May 2026 raised an additional $400 million led by Kleiner Perkins. Its valuation at the time was reported to be $3.4 billion.

The company has not yet unveiled a product, but said it is developing foundation models together with dedicated robot hardware so it can carry out sophisticated work on manufacturing sites. It did not disclose whether the hardware is humanoid.

Mind Robotics' strength is cited as its access to Rivian factories. Rivian is both an equity investor and an early customer. That gives Mind Robotics a base to secure training data on real auto production lines and deploy robots on site. Rivian is currently expanding R2 production at its plant in Normal, Illinois, and delivered 19,248 vehicles in the third quarter of 2025.

This structure is also compared with Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus. Tesla has presented Optimus as a future growth driver, but its targets for production speed and real factory use have been delayed several times. Elon Musk suggested producing about 10,000 units in 2025 and using 1,000 in factories by year-end, but in January 2026 he acknowledged there were no robots doing meaningful work. Tesla later converted the Model S and Model X production lines at its Fremont plant for Optimus, and repeatedly postponed the schedule to unveil Optimus V3. Musk has said production in July 2026 would be "extremely slow at first."

Mind Robotics, by contrast, is taking a real assembly line-focused approach without putting forward public demonstrations or production targets. Its strategy is to improve robot completeness based on real factory data after securing Rivian as an early source of demand. Field's arrival is therefore interpreted as a move that strengthens execution to link development beyond the research phase to mass-produced industrial robots.

Field's career is particularly geared to putting laboratory-stage hardware into mass production systems. As Mind Robotics seeks to build robot hardware that can operate reliably at a shift-work level in auto plants, beyond developing AI models, the appointment is expected to emerge as a key variable in the commercialization phase.