Mind Robotics, the robotics company led by Rivian chief RJ Scaringe, has hired Doug Field as president. Field ran Ford's electric vehicle work until recently. Earlier he led Apple's Project Titan and the development of the Tesla Model 3. The hire is seen as a major win for the secretive venture.
What it means: Mind Robotics hiring Doug Field shows where talent and capital are heading in technology: an executive with experience on the Tesla Model 3, Apple's Project Titan and, more recently, Ford's electric vehicles chooses a robotics company connected to Rivian's chief, suggesting robotics is seen as the next big frontier after electric cars. Field's background matters for a specific reason, because it is about mass production of complex hardware, exactly where many robotics companies fail, since a prototype that works in the lab is a long way from thousands of units with consistent quality and sensible cost. Mind Robotics remaining largely secretive makes it hard to judge what it is building, but hiring a profile like this signals industrial-scale ambitions. For the wider sector, executives moving from carmaking into robotics indicate that automotive skills such as supply chain management, safety engineering and quality control are becoming valuable in new fields.
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