Is Rivian Automotive (RIVN) Among Jeff Bezos’ Investments in 2025?
March 4, 2025
We recently compiled a list of the Jeff Bezos Investments in 2025: 12 Companies Bezos Is Investing In.In this article, we are going to take a look at where Rivian Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ:RIVN) stands against the other companies Bezos is investing in.
Since leaving his position as CEO of Amazon in 2021, Jeff Bezos has been quite active. He has been investing in real estate and companies, staying involved with Amazon and Blue Origin, and becoming close to President-elect Trump. “I’ve actually never worked harder,” he told the New York Times last December.
Jeff Bezos has directly invested in at least 108 startups across all industries since 1998, when he was reported to have invested $250,000 into Google. Although he does not publish his returns nor do the firms in which he invests, he has made early bets on several companies that have gone on to launch some of the most high-profile tech IPOs in the recent decade.
He certainly has enough cash to play with. According to Forbes, Bezos has sold around $32 billion in his main company shares since its initial public offering, including nearly $14 billion last year. He is now the third richest person in the world, with a net worth of $237 billion.
Although Bezos has spent a lot of time and money on yachts, aircraft, and real estate since transitioning from CEO to chairman of Amazon in 2021, he remains actively involved in his venture portfolio, advising portfolio firms and assisting with investment selections. However, Bezos isn’t as engaged as, say, a typical large venture capital firm: he was only the lead investor in one funding round last year (for Swiss-Mile), which means he likely didn’t acquire significant stakes in the majority of the companies, and he isn’t known to hold a board seat at any of the startups he has backed.
Two of the companies Forbes contacted said that a Bezos spokesman asked them not to discuss with the media about the Bezos investment, but those who did speak favorably about it. Swiss-Mile’s Bjelonic, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, made the following comment:
“What I was most surprised with was actually how well he understood the technology behind the Al training. He would ask questions about reinforcement learning, imitation learning, how it works, going all the way to the details of the physics elements that are needed on our side.”
Regardless of how invested Bezos is in any given company, publicizing his name as an investor provides marketing exposure.
The autonomous robot business is still in its early stages of commercialization. Bjelonic compared the business to a “blue ocean,” predicting that in ten years, hundreds of robotics startups will fail while only a few will flourish. It will take years to determine whether those bets pay off.
However, the chances may be in Bezos’ favor, in part because he can combine his economic expertise with the fact that he will almost certainly be able to invest in any firm he chooses.
According to Columbia Business School professor Michael Ewens, the “best” and “hottest” startups reach out to people like Bezos first.
“In general, he’s a very good investor, because he’s getting calls. He’s first in line.”
A state-of-the-art electric vehicle charging at a station at a suburban mall.
We examined the investments of Bezos Expeditions, Jeff Bezos’ family office, to identify key companies he’s invested in. All selected firms are publicly traded except the last one, and the stocks are ranked in ascending order using Insider Monkey’s database of over 1,000 hedge funds in Q4 2024 to gauge hedge fund sentiment for stocks. The portfolio also includes one of his most recent private company investments, which is ranked last on our list.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 40
Amazon is a major institutional investor in Tesla’s competitor, Rivian Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ:RIVN). Since Amazon has invested in air freight, it is appropriate for the company to invest in its future fleet needs, including short-range EVs for same-day delivery.
Rivian Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ:RIVN) recorded a gross profit of $170 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, due to improvements in variable costs, revenue per delivered unit, and fixed expenses. The company anticipates these improvements to benefit the company in the long run and position it well to earn a minor gross profit in 2025. It reported record revenues in the fourth quarter of 2024, driven by regulatory credit sales, software and services growth, and improved R1 average selling prices as the Tri-Motor offering became more widely available. Overall, revenue surged by 33% YoY in Q4 2024.
The developer of electric vehicles saw its shares rise by more than 7% last year. The firm has stated that it plans to provide a hands-free driving alternative later this year. Rivian Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ:RIVN) also stated that other manufacturers are interested in acquiring technology from its joint venture with Volkswagen.
Rivian Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ:RIVN) has consolidated the financial results of its joint venture with Volkswagen, which is estimated to generate $2 billion in revenue over the next four years. The company also raised significant funds, bringing its cash equivalents and short-term investments to $7.7 billion.
Overall RIVN ranks 5th on our list of Jeff Bezos’ Investments in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential for RIVN as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than RIVN but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stock To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
Search
RECENT PRESS RELEASES
