Soros Fund Hopes Rivian IPO Prices at Value Below $80 Billion

(Bloomberg) — One of Rivian Automotive Inc.’s big-name investors, Soros Fund Management LLC, hopes the electric-vehicle startup will list at a valuation lower than the $80 billion target reported by Bloomberg in August.

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“I think my compliance people might yell at me for talking about this, but we think that is a great company,” Dawn Fitzpatrick, Soros’s chief executive officer and investment chief, told Erik Schatzker on Tuesday at the Bloomberg Invest Global Summit in New York. “Candidly, we hope they come public a little bit cheaper than that because we want there to be a long-term value play there.”

A representative for Rivian declined to comment. The size of Soros’s stake in the startup is not known.

Rivian, seen as a potential future rival to industry heavyweight Tesla Inc., disclosed an investment by Soros in July 2020 as part of a $2.5 billion round led by T. Rowe Price. The Irvine, California-based company has raised more than $10.5 billion to date from a list of investors including Amazon.com Inc., Ford Motor Co. and BlackRock Inc.

Last week, Rivian filed for a public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, detailing an almost $1 billion loss in the first half of this year. It has recently started production on its debut vehicle, a battery-electric pickup called R1T. It later plans to build a battery-electric SUV called R1S and has an order from Amazon for 100,000 electric delivery vans.