Rivian said Thursday that first-quarter revenue rose 11% to $1.38 billion, a touch below Wall Street’s $1.39 billion estimate, as the electric-vehicle maker posted a smaller-than-expected loss and kept its full-year outlook unchanged.
The company reported a loss of $0.33 per share, better than the $0.72 analysts had expected, while adjusted EBITDA came in at a loss of $472 million. Rivian also said gross profit reached $119 million in the quarter, helped by a $180 million gross profit in its software and services segment. The numbers gave the market a clearer read on how much progress the company is making as it tries to scale without losing control of cash burn.
Rivian’s results landed as it pushes through a busy stretch for its business. Last week, the company began production of the R2 at its plant in Normal, Illinois, and said customer deliveries will begin later this spring. It is also moving to ramp production of the new model mainly in the third and fourth quarters, a timetable that matters because the R2 is central to Rivian’s next phase of growth.
RJ Scaringe said the company is now moving into the ramp-up phase and will start customer deliveries soon, while also making sure suppliers, the plant and the product are ready. He also said higher volume should help fixed costs get spread over more vehicles, bringing down cost of goods sold and making the margin structure more visible.
The company said it produced 10,236 vehicles and delivered 10,365 in the first quarter, underscoring that it is still working through a relatively modest manufacturing base. Rivian is currently selling the R1T, R1S and EDV vehicles, and it reaffirmed its 2026 delivery forecast of 62,000 to 67,000 vehicles.
At the same time, Rivian announced it will increase the initial capacity of its planned Georgia assembly plant by 50% to 300,000 units and reduce the Department of Energy loan commitment tied to the project from $6.6 billion to around $4.5 billion. Scaringe said getting access to that money sooner and faster will help the company build more capacity and volume earlier, and noted that the first phase of the plant was being lifted from 200,000 units to 300,000 after renegotiation of the loan.
That plant is still years away. Construction is scheduled to start in 2026, Rivian expects to begin drawing on the DOE loan in 2027, and its production start goal for the Georgia site is late 2028. The loan revision gives Rivian more room to move now, but it also shows how tightly the company’s expansion plan remains linked to federal financing and its ability to reach scale quickly enough to support it.
For the year, Rivian maintained guidance for an adjusted EBITDA loss of $1.80 billion to $2.10 billion and capital expenditures of $1.95 billion to $2.05 billion. The company’s first-quarter gross profit and improved per-share loss suggest progress, but the path ahead still depends on whether the R2 launch, the Georgia buildout and the next round of production gains arrive on schedule.
