Volkswagen’s Silicon Valley software hub is already packed with Rivian talent

Here’s the revised text without the word “TechCrunch”:The blockbuster $5 billion deal between Volkswagen Group and Rivian is just days old. But it turns out, VW Group was tapping into Rivian’s software expertise months before the partnership was announced.

VW Group’s struggling software arm Cariad has hired at least 23 of the startup’s top employees over the past several months, a review of LinkedIn data reveals. Cariad’s chief software officer, chief product security officer, two of its vice presidents, and two principal engineers have all been hired from Rivian. Nearly all of the other hires came from senior software roles at Rivian, many of them this year.

The hires pre-date any deal between VW and Rivian. The joint venture, which would allow the German giant to leverage Rivian’s software and electrical architecture expertise, is still being formed. The JV isn’t expected to be formalized until the fourth quarter — a detail that VW and Rivian spokespeople pointed out.

Still, the wave of new hires illustrates VW’s — and, more specifically, Cariad’s — desire to tap software talent. And those early hires could prove fruitful as the joint venture comes together.

The hires have bolstered Cariad’s effort to build up a Silicon Valley outpost in Mountain View called the SDV Hub — an acronym that gives a nod to the so-called software-defined vehicle that every automaker is chasing. The SDV hub is ground zero for Cariad’s next-generation software architecture known as “software 2.0.”

In fall 2023, Cariad hired Sanjay Lal, who most recently led the development of Rivian’s infotainment and next-gen middleware across the vehicle and cloud, to lead the establishment of the SDV hub. The focus of the engineers at the SDV hub in California — as well as some German-based workers under Lal — is on the software 2.0 architecture that is supposed to be an operating system designed for all VW Group brands.