RIVN – soaring since IPO 5 days back
Rivian becomes world’s third largest car company

Rivian, the best-funded electric vehicle startup in U.S. history, continued to gain stock market momentum days after its Nasdaq debut–so much so that the California company currently ranks as the world’s third most valuable automaker, topped only by Tesla the stock debuted on the Nasdaq on November 11.

The issue price was set at $78 and the company was valued at almost $86 billion at the end of its first day as a listed company. The market cap has now surged to $147 billion for an automaker that is yet to produce 1,000 vehicles. It’s valued at more than half of the world’s largest carmaker, Toyota, and more than century-old General Motors and Ford Motor, which happens to be a Rivian shareholder.nd Toyota.

The Amazon-backed startup, which only began building its battery-powered R1T pickup truck last month, won’t deliver many vehicles this year. Yet it appears investors see promise for it to benefit from greater U.S. government support for electric vehicles in the form of new funding for public charging stations in the newly signed infrastructure bill, as well as for hopes of more generous incentives to get consumers to switch to electric cars and trucks.

Per a recent Form 4 filing, Amazon bought roughly $200 million worth of Rivian stock at its IPO price of $78 per share. The buy worked out to 2,564,102 shares in total, worth a hair under the target dollar amount of a flat two hundred million at their purchase price.

Amazon now owns a total of 158,363,834 shares of Rivian, valued at some $20,579,380,228.3 at the company’s closing price of $129.95 per share set this afternoon. As Amazon paid just $78 per share for its most recent tranche of Rivian stock, the company has already seen an upside of more than $133 million on the purchase. In percentage terms, Amazon’s latest purchase of Rivian stock at its IPO price works out to just 1.6% of its total stake in the company

The industry researcher estimates that the number of electric vehicles in operation in the U.S. will rise from about 1.5 million at the end of 2020 to 9.3 million by 2026.

Rivian’s shares have been upped by 118 percent from the initial public offering price of $78, bringing its market valuation to $150 billion.

This comes amid growing demand for electric vehicles, as more consumers consider adopting the technology.

Rivian’s IPO has been a blockbuster event, raising an ocean of capital for the EV company and boosting its market cap into the stratosphere