Doug Field has been named president of Mind Robotics, the industrial AI and robotics venture that Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe created last year. The hiring was announced onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, which is being held in San Francisco from October 13 to 15. Field will take over the day-to-day operations of the business, including product, engineering, and operations. Scaringe remains involved with Mind Robotics but is handing the operational leadership to Field.
Field brings a long history in electric vehicles and technology to the role. He spent five years at Ford shaping the automaker's electric vehicle and technology strategies before leaving in April, a departure that was part of a wider leadership reorganization. Before Ford, he led Apple's Project Titan, the electric and autonomous car effort that was canceled in 2024. He was also senior vice president of engineering at Tesla, where he oversaw development of the Model 3 and guided the sedan through production difficulties. Earlier in his career, he was employee No. 1 at Segway.
Scaringe said on the Disrupt stage that he wanted someone like Field to help run Mind Robotics, so he called to ask for a recommendation. He said the two found alignment on the mission of the business and, more importantly, on how they work and build teams.
Mind Robotics has raised more than $1 billion from Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins, and the venture arms of Volkswagen and Salesforce. The company is building a full stack for industrial manufacturing, with purpose-built robots that run on foundation models and are intended to automate industrial and manufacturing tasks at scale. Scaringe has said Mind Robotics will not try to mimic all the biomechanics of a human, unlike the humanoid robots being developed by Tesla and others. Rivian serves as the startup's first customer and as a live, high-volume manufacturing environment for training and deploying its models.
Field said in a statement that integrating AI and robotics is one of the most important and difficult engineering challenges of the time. He said Mind Robotics has assembled an exceptional team and holds a unique advantage in its ability to deploy and learn inside a real, high-volume factory from day one. He said he was thrilled to join Scaringe in building a team, culture, and technology that will redefine what can be made in America.
Mind Robotics is the second company Scaringe has created outside Rivian, following Also, a micromobility business starting with high-end e-bikes. Scaringe serves as chairman of Also but has tapped Chris Yu, formerly chief product officer at Specialized, to run its day-to-day operations. Mind Robotics and Also operate as stand-alone companies, though Rivian holds minority stakes in both and reported owning about a third of each startup as of June 30, 2026.
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