Volatile economy cited in Rivian cutting workforce

Rivian Automotive is cutting about 6% of its workforce and simplifying product plans, saying the economy has made it harder for the electric vehicle maker to raise money to build up production.

The Irvine-based company confirmed the cuts Wednesday in an internal memo from Chief Executive Officer RJ Scaringe. Surging inflation, higher interest rates and higher commodity prices have hurt the company’s ability to raise funds, he wrote.

“We need to be able to continue to grow and scale without additional financing in this macro environment,” Scaringe said in the memo. “To achieve this, we have simplified our product roadmap and focused on where it is most impactful to deploy capital.”

Rivian, which makes electric pickups and SUVs in addition to delivery vans, notched one of the biggest-ever U.S. initial public offerings in November as it emerged as a leading challenger to market leader Tesla.

The reduction will eliminate hundreds of jobs, given Rivian’s workforce of about 14,000 split across the factory in Normal, Illinois, and its headquarters in California, as well as sites in Michigan, the U.K. and Canada. The cutbacks won’t include manufacturing-operations workers in Normal, according to the memo. monopoly,” according to the complaint, which was filed in federal court in San Francisco Wednesday.

Meta has made a number of acquisitions, most of them small, to bolster its offering in virtual and augmented reality. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg believes that in the future, the company will popularize a metaverse,a more immersive version of the internet, where people can populate an alternative virtual world to go shopping, go to work and see friends.

Meta, which announced its plan to buy Within in October, is the world’s top VR headset maker with its Oculus product controlling about 80 percent of the market, according to research firm IDC.

Virtual reality is a small but growing slice of the consumer technology industry. Meta has identified the space as its next big bet, requiring big investment.