Mind Robotics Appoints Doug Field President

Mind Robotics has appointed veteran automotive engineer Doug Field as president, adding high-volume manufacturing experience to a startup building industrial robots and physical-AI systems.

What happened

Field has held senior technology and engineering roles at Tesla, Apple and Ford and will lead product development, engineering and operations at Mind Robotics. The startup was founded by Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe and is developing industrial robots alongside AI foundation models intended for complex manufacturing tasks. Rivian is serving as an early customer and training environment. Mind Robotics has reportedly secured more than $1 billion in financing since its founding in 2025, although today's news is the leadership appointment rather than a new funding round. The company has not publicly demonstrated general-purpose autonomy across many industrial settings.

Why it matters

Physical-AI startups need more than strong models. They must build reliable machines, integrate them into factories, manufacture at scale and support customers after deployment. Field's experience across electric vehicles and large engineering organisations is directly relevant to those execution challenges.

The bigger picture

Robotics competition is increasingly about combining AI research with industrial discipline. Mind Robotics is betting that purpose-built machines and real factory data can outperform a one-size-fits-all approach to humanoid robotics.