Rivian cuts hundreds of jobs as it ramps up R2 SUV launch

Rivian cut hundreds of employees on Tuesday, less than 2% of its workforce, in a fresh restructuring that landed just as the company began public deliveries of its R2 SUV. The move underscored the pressure on EV makers to keep growing while tightening costs, even as Rivian leans on the R2 to move from a niche electric-vehicle brand to a broader automaker.

The cuts were concentrated in Rivian’s service and customer organization, including sales and marketing-related functions. Rivian said the move was meant to help the company scale to profitability, a goal that has become more complicated as it pours more money into autonomy. Public customer deliveries of the R2 began on June 9, a milestone Rivian has cast as central to its next phase.

That next phase remains expensive. Rivian has never turned an annual profit and lost $3.6 billion in 2025. The company had 15,232 employees across North America and Europe at the end of 2025, so even a reduction of less than 2% still represents a notable trim across a business trying to expand production, support more customers and build out new software capabilities at the same time.

The layoff round also follows an earlier cutback in October 2025, when Rivian laid off more than 600 workers, or roughly 4.5% of its workforce, in restructurings that hit marketing, vehicle operations, and sales, delivery and mobile operations teams. The pattern points to a broader reality in the EV sector: the scale-up years have not just been about factories and new models, but about repeated workforce reductions as companies search for a leaner path to survival.

Rivian’s profitability timeline has slipped again because of autonomy spending. In March 2026, the company said it no longer expected to be adjusted EBITDA positive in 2027, citing higher R&D tied to its autonomy roadmap. CEO RJ Scaringe and CFO Claire McDonough have both framed autonomy as a long-term strategic priority, and Rivian’s March partnership with Uber to develop and deploy autonomous R2-based robotaxis made that bet even clearer. For Rivian, the question now is whether the company can fund growth, automation and self-driving ambitions without making layoffs a recurring feature of the climb toward scale.