Doug Field has built electric vehicles at Ford and Tesla, led Apple's secretive car initiative, and held the title of employee No. 1 at Segway. Now the veteran executive is turning his attention to Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe's latest venture: Mind Robotics.
Field has been appointed president of Mind Robotics, the industrial AI and robotics company that spun out of Rivian in 2025. The announcement, made onstage at Disrupt 2026, signals that Mind Robotics is preparing to scale its early operations just one year after its founding.
Scaringe remains involved with Mind Robotics, but Field will oversee day-to-day operations, including product, engineering, and business functions.
A Well-Funded Industrial AI Play
Mind Robotics has already secured more than $1 billion in backing from Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins, and the venture arms of Volkswagen and Salesforce. The company is developing a full industrial manufacturing stack, with purpose-built robots running on foundation models designed to automate industrial and manufacturing tasks at scale.
Unlike the humanoid robots being developed by Tesla and others, Scaringe has said Mind Robotics will not attempt to replicate all the biomechanics of a human. Instead, the startup is using Rivian as "a live, high-volume manufacturing environment for model training and deployment," with Rivian serving as Mind Robotics' first customer.
"It's incredibly exciting what's happening in robotics and what we're capable of doing today, when we think about the progress that's happened on the hardware, modeling techniques, [and] bringing that together to develop robots that can actually be deployed at scale," Scaringe said on the Disrupt stage.
Field's Track Record Across EVs, Apple, and Tesla
Field left Ford in April 2026 after five years shaping the automaker's electric vehicle and technology strategies. His departure was part of a broader leadership reorganization at Ford. Before Ford, Field led Apple's Project Titan, the electric and autonomous car initiative that was canceled in 2024. He also served as senior vice president of engineering at Tesla, where he oversaw development of the Model 3 and guided the sedan through its notorious "production hell."
"Integrating AI and robotics is one of the most important—and difficult—engineering challenges of our time," Field said in a statement. "Mind has assembled an exceptional team and has a unique advantage: the ability to deploy and learn inside a real, high-volume factory from day one. I'm thrilled to join RJ in building a team, culture, and technology that will redefine what we can make in America."
The Second Rivian Spinoff
Mind Robotics is the second company Scaringe has spun out of Rivian, following Also, a micromobility venture that launched with high-end e-bikes. As with Field and Mind Robotics, Scaringe serves as chairman of Also while delegating day-to-day leadership to Chris Yu, former chief product officer of Specialized.
Both Mind Robotics and Also operate as standalone companies, though Rivian holds minority stakes in each. As of June 30, 2026, Rivian reported owning roughly a third of each startup, according to SEC filings.
via TechCrunch