EV maker Rivian announced Tuesday (US time) that it was laying off hundreds of employees, accounting for less 2% of the startup’s workforce. As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, the job cuts will impact teams in the service and customer segments, as the team works out a profitable strategy to scale the business.
Rivian announced another round of layoffs in months
This week’s layoff announcement comes just a few days after the automaker (June 9) started delivering the R2 SUV, a new vehicle through which the company hopes to enter the cutthroat world of mainstream brands like the Elon Musk-led EV giant Tesla. Meanwhile, its other passenger vehicles, the R1T pickup and the R1S three-row SUV, have still managed to consolidate Rivian’s image as a premium EV brand. However, the company has yet to turn an annual profit.
According to company filings, the American electric vehicle manufacturer and automotive technology company, founded in 2009, incurred a $3.6 billion loss last year and delivered just over 42,000 vehicles. On top of that, the company’s automotive segment lost about $6,000 per vehicle it delivered during Q1 2026, as reported by CNBC.
The 2% workforce cut also follows a previous round of layoffs in October 2025, when more than 600 workers, or roughly 4.5% of the workforce, were forced to leave their roles at the startup.
Citing a company spokesperson, a Business Insider reporter revealed that those affected by the latest round of layoffs are eligible for rehire. Noting that while the company was offering severance packages, benefits, and career-transition services, the report ascertained that the impacted workers are being encouraged to apply for other vacancies at the EV maker.
Rivian is believed to have had a workforce of 15,232 employees across North America and Europe at the end of 2025.
A tough setting for EVs in the US
2025 was set for record-breaking EV sales. Numbers were looking up until Q3 2025, when the electric-vehicle share of total US new-vehicle sales peaked at 10.5%, according to services provider Cox Automotive. Eventually, those figures fell to 5.8% in Q4.
Although Cox Automotive’s findings expect the new line of vehicles, including the Rivian R2, to write the “next chapter of EV sales in the US,” automakers can no longer rely on the federal incentive boost that once used to drive the demand for EVs. In September 2025, federal incentives of up to $7,500 for purchasing an EV were discontinued as part of US President Donald Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act.’
According to a report published by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) in early 2026, battery EV market share reached a record high right before those credits expired, with 12% of light-duty vehicles being sold in September. The sales then sharply fell to less than 6% of the market in each of the remaining months of 2025. Ultimately, last year was the first year in which annual sales and market share of battery EVs declined.