Rivian's Stock Spikes 27% After Reporting $144 Million Profit in 2025

Rivian's stock skyrocketed 27% Friday after the electric car maker "shocked the market with strong earnings results," reports the Los Angeles Times, "proving itself an outlier in the EV market, which has been struggling with the end of government subsidies and cooling consumer excitement."

They add that Rivian's strong earnings results suggest that "after years of struggling with losses, it may have at last found a path to profitability." On Thursday, Rivian reported gross profits for 2025 of $144 million, compared with a net loss in 2024 of $1.2 billion... Rivian credited the swing to gross profit to "strong software and services performance, higher average selling prices, and reductions in cost per vehicle..." Rivian delivered 42,247 vehicles in 2025 and produced 42,284 vehicles. The company still reported a $432-million net loss for the year for automotive profits, an improvement from 2024.
But Rivian's software and services revenue grew more than threefold to $1.55 billion for the year, reports TechCrunch. "And the joint venture with Volkswagen Group was behind most of that growth, according to Rivian." VW and Rivian formed a technology joint venture in 2024 that is worth up to $5.8 billion. The joint venture is milestone-based and in 2025 Rivian hit the mark, which meant a $1 billion payout in the form of a share sale. Under the terms of the JV, Rivian will supply VW Group with its existing electrical architecture and software technology stack... Rivian is expected to receive an additional $2 billion of capital as part of the joint venture in 2026, CFO Claire McDonough said Thursday on the company earnings call... And while the funds provide a hefty stopgap, Rivian's financial success in 2026 will hinge largely on the rollout of its next EV, the R2 [priced around $45,000].

Re:

[stooo]

That's only reserved to a very special kind of bullshit CEOs.
Difficult to replicate. Others simply don't.

The Musk in the Room

[machineghost]

I would imagine that having your lead rival completely self-own themselves doesn't hurt either.

Re:

[stooo]

Plot twist: not the same AC.

Re:The Musk in the Room

[Jeremi]

My God! You are so, so smart in a superficial shallow sort of way! Looking forward to your academic treatise that upends all of economics! The next Adam Smith, here on Slashdot, of all places!

Cool, now that we've got the obligatory mean-girl style personal attack out of the way, is he wrong?

Would you claim that Musk loudly and publicly allying himself with Trump, the GOP, DOGE, and various ultra-right-wing European political groups, and regularly spouting off online like a 13-year-old 4chan edgelord, was a wise course of action, when he's also the person in charge of a company whose income stream depends on selling electric vehicles to environmentally-conscious liberals?

In my city, a large percentage of the Teslas now sport explicitly anti-Musk bumper stickers. It sure doesn't look like Tesla is going get a lot of repeat customers going forward, and Musk hasn't had much success marketing his EVs to the right-wing crowd, either. But humanoid robots, right? That's the ticket. Everyone's going to want to buy one of those, because reasons.

Re: The Musk in the Room

[OrangeTide]

Or people have been told for half a century that trickle down, laissez faire capitalism would make us all prosperous. And all the while, Republicans and Democrats have been shaking hands to send our jobs over seas.

Tuition is up, housing is less affordable, and unsecured debt is way up. Opportunities to move up are far fewer than they once were for the working class. The quality of life for the bottom 50% has plummeted while our cities have turned into something worse than the shithole countries we used to invade.

There is no Marxism in America to even rail against. It's dead. Democrats walked away from unions and now embrace Wall St. You saw Harris tell us the economy was great under Biden because the stock market went up. Middle America called B.S. because most people don't have stocks!

The whole red scare is lies and propaganda to distract Americans from the political elite picking our pockets. Somewhere along the way we forgot that the government works for the People. And I hope own day we all get on the same page and put the fear of God into these crooks.

Re: The Musk in the Room

[jezwel]

You saw Harris tell us the economy was great under Biden because the stock market went up. Middle America called B.S. because most people don't have stocks!

That's a defense against the republicans trying to say the economy went backwards under Biden.

Heck even Bondi tried to use the DOW being up as a defence in her congressional hearings recently, and those hearings are about human trafficking!

I digress - sometimes you can fight fire with fire if everyone in your audience doesn't know any better.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

Republicans, or more specifically the far-right MAGA base, want to blame immigrants for Biden's economic woes. It is possible for two sides to be both be terribly wrong with their facts. Maybe if Dems didn't take the bait every time a Republican said the word "trans" the Dems could have put up a more cogent take down of their opponent's position.

The moment the stock market goes up, Trump and his allies want to make the same claim as Biden/Harris. It's because GDP and the DOW as the ultimate metric for econo

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't every company self report?

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

Yes. It is, however, a crime (fraud) to lie about those numbers- assuming the SEC is funded anymore.

Re:

[stooo]

Very funny. HAHAHAHAHA.

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

Look at it this way, for publicly traded companies, lying about those numbers is almost guaranteed to get out.
The financials of publicly traded corporations are more trustworthy than your grandma telling you how much she loves you.
Lying about them not only is a criminal offense, but defrauding shareholders, when you have millions of them, is also a particularly bad idea.

This is amazing

[rsilvergun]

Because it means they only need 144 years of this profit to hit their market cap!

And this is still somehow infinitely better than Tesla.

The stock market is massively overvalued and we all just have to pray to hell that it continues to be for at least another three to five years.

Because when the correction hits, and it will sooner or later it always does, it's going to hit like the fist of a god. And we are going to need at least moderately competent people in charge or we are more fucked than us

Re:

[Sique]

That's wrong. EVs do reduce smog. Yes, tire residue is similar to all other cars (even a little less, because electric cars have better power characteristics and produce less load changes like gear hammer). But that's just a part of the smog. EVs don't emit sooth. EVs don't emit Nitrogen oxides. EVs, thanks to recuperation, emit much less brake dust.

Tire residue is probably the least problematic of the particle emissions, as the particles are quite large and don't linger in the air very long, quite differ

Re:

[drinkypoo]

The worst vehicle emission by a long way is unburned hydrocarbons, which EVs don't put out, so that's a huge win. Unburned fuel is most harmful to people and has high GWP.

The second worst is PM 2.5 soot, which they also don't produce, yay.

Tire residue is still a problem though. They're highly enriched with additives and the dust washes into water systems. They're a reason why moving to EVs is rearranging deck chairs. EVs have lower lifecycle emissions than ICEVs but they're still much much higher than using

Re:Anyway I said it many times but people

[Sique]

That's a valid and very important argument, especially because the niche EVs are now occupying, the mainly short-distance city hauler, is most easily replaced by better city planning, which includes better zoning rules and better public transport. Right now, most municipalities in the U.S. impose minimum parking rules, but minimum public transport rules are rare, leading to the effect that for each vehicle, the U.S. right now provides eight parking spaces. This speeds up urban sprawl and makes even short distance trips unnecessarily long because of all the mostly empty parking spaces you have to pass to reach the next point of interest. It even destroys city center re-development, because each developer has to first knock down buildings to provide parking spaces for the new development, which in turn makes the new development less attractive, because all you have in the immediate neighborhood are parking spaces, which are used by less than 12.5%, but cause heat during the summer and don't block any cold winds during the winter.

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

That's not how market caps work. If you recall, Amazon didn't make a profit until its 10th year, and then, it was tiny. Compared to its market cap, that profit was infinitesimally small. This is because in the first decade, Amazon's investors plowed tons of money into the company to build it up. Since then, their profits have soared, reducing its P/E ratio to about 27x. Rivian's profits will likewise grow, unless they mismanage the business or calamity strikes, bring the P/E ratio to a more reasonable numbe

Re:This is amazing

[AmiMoJo]

It shows they are moving in the right direction, and unlike Tesla it's not built on a cult of personality or bullshit promises about full self driving appreciating assets. It's just a solid business with a solid product, making a profit relatively early compared to other startups too.

The profit isn't from their cars

[hambone142]

Rivian's profits are from their software that VW purchased.
Their cars are ranked as the most unreliable cars in the United States, unfortunately.

Re:The profit isn't from their cars

[ArchieBunker]

Rivian isn't that bad. Consumer Reports counts every minor problem and tallies that up for a reliability score. So the transmission in your Ford can grenade itself and that counts the same as a Rivian having a squeaky dashboard.

Re:

[argStyopa]

This is a lie.
Covered in their FAQ (https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/consumer-reports-car-reliability-faq-a1099917197/)

"They use a weighted system that prioritizes issues based on severity, safety, and potential to cause a vehicle to be taken out of service."

I have a friend who is a big Rivian advocate and will talk your ear off about how awesome the brand is while admitting that his actual vehicle is an unreliable piece of shit.

Re:

[jhoegl]

https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a62919131/tesla-has-highest-fatal-accident-rate-of-all-auto-brands-study/ [roadandtrack.com]
And reading the "unreliability" reasons, I would be frustrated, but I wouldnt be dead Tesla due to updates frustrated, or have to pay $99/mo for my auto driving ability after I literally paid 10k for the privilege frustrated.
https://www.moneydigest.com/2069324/youve-been-warned-consumer-reports-electric-vehicles-least-reliable/ [moneydigest.com]
Which is a cash grab by Musk for his Trillionaire markers.
https://www. [thepricer.org]

Re:

[BadCoding]

Not sure how the article comes up with Tesla being the worse. The article cites a Iseecars report that lists the tesla S as 21st and the tesla Y as 6th. The number one spot for most fatalities per vehicle miles is a Hyundai Venue. Rank Model Fatal Accident Rate (Cars per Billion Vehicle Miles) Compared to Overall Average 1 Hyundai Venue 13.9 4.9x 2 Chevrolet Corvette 13.6 4.8x 3 Mitsubishi Mirage 13.6 4.8x 4 Porsche 911 13.2 4.6x 5 Honda CR-V Hybrid 13.2 4.6x 6 Tesla Model Y 10.6 3.7x

I want an R3X

[TheMiddleRoad]

Maybe
If it's any good

Re:

[Smonster]

I’m hoping they work out the kinks in the R2 over the next 4 years. That’s when I am planning to replace my current ICE SUV.

Re:

[TheMiddleRoad]

They had a lot of issues with the R1. Still a great vehicle. I think they may not have good enough suspension engineers, though, to really pull off something great.

Re:

[greytree]

"[...] constant over-the-air updates as cause for the low ranking."

So if a manufacturer abandons software support for their vehicles, they get a higher ranking ?

Peak financialization

[sinkskinkshrieks]

Billionaires and soon trillionaires with excesses of funny money randomly gentrifying stocks based on shaky fundamentals.