Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse and former chief growth officer at Rivian, thinks we’re entering an era of major re-industrialization in the U.S. — one where factories run on AI-powered robots, not cheap overseas labor.
Behl, who helped scale Rivian from a conference room idea in 2015 to a publicly traded EV maker, is now investing in the next wave of industrial and mobility startups, including two Rivian spinouts: Also and Mind Robotics. It’s part of Eclipse’s larger bet that the physical world is finally ready for the kind of disruption software saw a decade ago.
Today on TechCrunch’sEquitypodcast, Kirsten Korosec sits down with Behl to talk about why Rivian keeps spinning out companies, what founders in the “physical world” need that software foundersdon’t, and why automation is becoming necessary if the U.S. wants to compete without Chinese supply chains.
Listen to the full episode to hear about:
- Why Behl looks for founders who are both “hyper-optimistic” and grounded in reality, and why that combination is surprisingly rare, even in Silicon Valley.
- How vertical integration worked for Rivian but won’t work for most startups today.
- Behl’s prediction that autonomy will become “real and something we can touch and feel” in the next five years.
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Kirsten Korosec is a reporter and editor who has covered the future of transportation from EVs and autonomous vehicles to urban air mobility and in-car tech for more than a decade. She is currently the transportation editor at TechCrunch and co-host of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. She is also co-founder and co-host of the podcast, “The Autonocast.” She previously wrote for Fortune, The Verge, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and CBS Interactive.
You can contact or verify outreach from Kirsten by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at kkorosec.07 on Signal.
Theresa Loconsolo is an audio producer at TechCrunch focusing on Equity, the network’s flagship podcast. Before joining TechCrunch in 2022, she was one of 2 producers at a four-station conglomerate where she wrote, recorded, voiced and edited content, and engineered live performances and interviews from guests like lovelytheband. Theresa is based in New Jersey and holds a bachelors degree in Communication from Monmouth University.
You can contact or verify outreach from Theresa by emailing [email protected].