You Are Looking at the Future
Mate Rimac has built a multibillion-dollar EV technology company, released a record-breaking electric hypercar and taken the reins of storied French marque Bugatti. Next up: Turning 34.
When Mate Rimac was announced as Bugatti’s new CEO, he was wearing shorts and sneakers. The dresseddown entrepreneur—who, at just 33 years old, has a net worth of $2 billion—has big plans for the storied French brand, among them the next generation of electric Bugattis.
“This year, just as you say, it’s like everything is coming together.
It’s just f------ insane for me.”
MateRimac sat at a table, facing a camera. To his right was Oliver Blume, the CEO of Porsche, and to his left its finance chief, LutzMeschke.They were about to host avideo conference to announce the deal to merge Bugatti, for which Porsche has responsibility within the vast Volkswagen Group, with Rimac’s eponymous start-uphypercarmaker. Asmallnumber of journalists from the business media joined Robb Report on the call, among themthe Financial Times and Bloomberg. Blume and Meschke were dressed in sober business attire, as you’d expect of German C-suite executives making a majorannouncement totheworld’spress, and they sat stiff and upright. But as the 33-year-old Rimac relaxed into his chair, his sneakers emerged from beneath the table, followed by a pair of bare legs. The wunderkind of the hypercar world was about to be handed control of one of its most fabled marques, and he’d chosen to wear shorts for the occasion.
Rimacdoubtlessmeant nodisrespect, buthiscasualdressserved asusefulvisual shorthandfor atransfer ofpowerextraordinary even by the turbulent standards of the supercar industry. Stewardship of arguably the world’s most prestigious marque, founded 112 years ago by one of the great automotive auteurs and maker of some of the most beautiful, powerful cars ever to grace the road, was passing from Europe’s largest manufacturing company to a start-up that began in a tiny nation 12 years ago by someone then barely out of his teens. Later that evening there would be a glossy event livestreamed from the spectacular 14thcentury Lovrijenac fortress perched high overbeautiful,ancientDubrovnikandthe opal waters of Croatia’s Adriatic coast. Rimac(hisname ispronouncedMAH-tay REE-mats)leapt onstage toacknowledge the significance of what was happening and the responsibility he was assuming. He was now wearing a well-cut suit but still kept the sneakers.
Despite his youth, Rimac is already acknowledged by his peers as one of the preeminent modern supercar makers,
a successor to Ettore Bugatti alongside Horacio Pagani, Christian von Koenigsegg and Gordon Murray. The club of engineers who have created the cars and companies that carry their names from scratch is exclusive, and Rimac had only officially joined it when the Bugatti deal was announced in early July. The Rimac Nevera, his first proper production electric hypercar, was tested by RobbReport andahandfulofothermedia in June, and customer deliveries are just starting.
But Rimac is already an established player. While developing his own hypercar, he has built a multibillion-dollar businesssupplyinghishigh-performance electric-propulsion technology to at least 15 major carmakers, including Ferrari, Aston Martin, Mercedes and Rimac’s fellow auteur Christian von Koenigsegg. Porsche and Hyundai are not only customers but also investors with significant equity stakes, and Pininfarina likes the Nevera so much that it’s using the car as the basis of its new 1,877 hp Battista. His business has grown so fast that Rimac simply hasn’t had time to get his own hypercar on sale until now.
The optics of the Bugatti-Rimac merger may seem odd at first, but the logic is indisputable. A new generation of electric Bugattis needs a transcendent levelofperformance,butVolkswagenhas lost the will to fund it. Big car companies can spend like the US military. Analysts estimate that VW has invested at least $2.4 billion in Bugatti since it took control in 1998 and lost around $5 million on every Veyron sold. It spent about $420 million creating the Chiron from the bones of the Veyron, and sources close to the deal say VW expected to spend the same again electrifying this 16-yearold platform.
Rimac is said to have offered to develop an all-new Chiron successor for around $240 million. Rather than write a check for that sum, VW proposed a merger. No cash is believed to have changed hands. The new Bugatti-Rimac will be 55 percent owned by the Rimac Group and 45 percent by Porsche, on behalf of Volkswagen. For now, the two brands will continue to be designed and built separately: Bugattis in Molsheim, France, and Rimacs from 2023 at its new campus headquarters near Zagreb.
Rimac is putting only his hypercar-making business into the new joint venture. His fast-growing operation supplying high-performance EV power trains and other equipment to the global carmakers is a separate business: Rimac Technology, solely owned by Rimac Group. Only 150 Neveras will be made, and Bugatti currently builds fewer than 100 cars each year. Even when the combined Bugatti-Rimac is at full production, the venture will account for only 15 to 20 percent of Rimac Group turnover. Rimac Technology will make up the rest, and it’s about to grow rapidly. It has contracts in place to supply major premium carmakerswithcomponentsandcompletepower trains for the high-performance variants of their pure-electric models. With volumes of up to 100,000 each year, it’s a huge leap in scale for Rimac. Your next car might not be a Nevera, but there’s a chance it will have Rimac tech on board.
Rimac remains the largest shareholder in the Rimac Group, with a37percentstake.Thelatestfunding round is believed to value the group in the mid-single-digit billions, giving him a nominal net worth of around $2 billion. In addition to Porsche AG’s 45 percentstakeinBugatti-Rimac,Porsche’s venture-capital arm owns 24 percent of Rimac Group, giving Porsche indirect majority ownership of Bugatti-Rimac. But Porsche is clear that there is no combination of voting rights, no de facto or de jure control, and that having Rimac as CEO of all three companies is one of the reasons it wanted the deal. “As a shareholder we want a real entrepreneur as CEO,” Blume says. “It is our clear strategy to pass operational control to Mate.”
Perhaps most strikingly, the deal means that despite that storied history, a 10-figureinvestmentbyVWover23years of ownership and hundreds of Veyrons and Chirons delivered, Bugatti is valued atlessthanRimac’sNevera-makingoperation alone, which is only just beginning to deliver customer cars. The reason is simple: Bugatti is almost worthless without the ultrahigh-performance electric power train it will need in the EV age.
Volkswagen doesn’t want to make the investment required to develop one. Rimac has one already. Without it, VW was seriously considering putting the Bugatti brand into cold storage.
Even by the hyper-compressed standards oftheyoungentrepreneursremaking the modern world, this has been a wild few months for Mate Rimac. First the launch of the Nevera in June, then the Bugatti announcement in early July and, later that same month, marriage to his childhood sweetheart. Then atour of the US, starting in Los Angeles and Pebble Beach in August, to meet not only customers for his $2.4 million Nevera but also Bugatti’s established clientele, who might be a little wary of both the brand’s transition to electric propulsion and its youthful new boss. Next he headed back to Zagreb to complete the transfer of power from Bugatti’s current CEO, the urbane Stephan Winkelmann, who also heads Lamborghini. Then he’ll continue the process of creating a successor for the Chiron.
“This year, just as you say, it’s like everything is coming together. It’s just f------ insane for me,” he tells me from New York. I’ve spoken with him several timesoverthepast,madfewmonths:first spending a relaxed couple of days with him on the bleak but beautiful Croatian island of Pag, where he launched the Nevera, and later on that conference call. He looks tired now, after his fierce travel schedule. But he is typically generous with his time, disarmingly honest, asking questions as well as answering them, and generally personable, approachable, funny and human: atypical, perhaps, for a tech entrepreneur.
Every cent of that $2 billion net worth isself-made.Rimacwasborn in Bosnia to an ethnically Croatian family of migrant construction workers, a tradition of exodus accelerated by the vicious conflict that raged as Yugoslaviadisintegrated.Rimacmoved to Germany atage 2andthen to anindependent Croatia in his early teens, where he was teased for his hick Bosnian accent. But his talent for electronic engineering wasspottedandencouraged by ateacher, and by age 18 he had registered a couple of patents and won anational prize for an
“For the Nevera, luxury was not really a concern:
It’s more about tech and performance. Luxury is much more important to Bugatti.”
early example of wearable tech: a“glove” that recognized hand gestures and could be used instead of a mouse. It’s still on display in a cabinet at Rimac’s HQ.
Rimac liked cars as much as gadgets andbought abatteredBMW 3Series, as it wasthecheapest way toget arear-wheeldrive car that he could race and drift. His best friend, Goran, inadvertently gave a multibillion-dollar business its start when heblew theBMW’sengine,prompting its 20-year-old owner to combine his two passions and replace the gas engine with an electric motor. It worked okay but not well enough for Rimac, who pulled it out again and tinkered with it, beginning a constant process of obsessive iterative improvement over 13 years, which he admits drives him and his staff crazy but has now resulted in his owning the best high-performance EV propulsion tech in the world. And most of Bugatti.
Iaskhim todefinewhatmakesRimac stand apart—what has brought so many established carmakers to Croatia in search of away tomake afast EVquickly?
“Look at the Nevera,” he says. “Almost everything in it was developed internally. This is what makes us different. There is noothercarcompanythathasdeveloped so many things in a car by themselves. And the second thing is execution. There aremanyotherstart-upsworking ontheir cars. Many of them have existed longer than us, and all of them have more fundingthan us. But we arethefirstafterTesla who finished the car and started production. Execution is everything.
“And we do it for afraction of the cost of others. It’s not because Croatian salaries are lower. It’s because we do things very differently from the other carmakers. And lastly, of course, it’s performance. There’s nobody even close to us.”
This is demonstrably true. In August a Nevera was independently tested at the Famoso dragstrip in California. The Bugatti Chiron Sport held the previous world production-car acceleration record, covering the quarter-mile in 9.4 seconds. The 1,914 hp Nevera ate up Famoso’s sticky tarmac in just 8.582 seconds at a terminal velocity of 167 mph. That 0.8 second difference is alifetime in these matters: Now combustion engines will never catch up. The Tesla Model S Plaidfaced offagainsttheNevera inthree races a few days later and, though it also beat the Chiron’s time, as promised, with a top time of 9.272 seconds, it was a long way behind the Nevera.
The Nevera’s stellar price automatically puts it in the beyond-premium segment of the car market, and while it’s surprisingly comfortable and practical for something with such terrifying performance, it was never intended to be a luxury good. Bugatti is different, though, andthisyoung,egalitarian,unpretentious electronic engineer is now in control of one of the world’s great luxury brands. The glamour of running a marque like Bugatti and delivering a luxury customer experience doesn’t seem to drive him;thequestion ofwhetherhehasplans to reinvent super-premium motoring as comprehensively as he has reinvented electric performance cars remains.
“For me, it’s more about cars and ecology,” he says. “For the Nevera, luxury was not really a concern: It’s more about tech and performance. Luxury is much more important to Bugatti. That’s why I think the two brands can coexist. Over the last 20 years, no other car had Bugatti’sperformance.That’swhatmade them special. Then came craftsmanship, quality and details, but number one was performance. But now performance is increasingly commoditized. You have a five-seat sedan like the Model S being faster-acceleratingthanprettymuch anything else on the road. So what puts you at the top of the pyramid in the future? Is it really just performance?
“Of course we’ll still do hypercars for Bugatti. We are working on a Chiron successor. But looking at Bugattis of the past, there haven’t been only sports cars. When performance alone is no longer the top selling point, what puts you at the pinnacle? Is it still a two-seat,