Amazon adds to its Rivian stake

Nestled in Rivian’s S-1 IPO filings was a note that there the EV company’s “cornerstone investors” had “indicated an interest” in buying up to $5 billion worth of its stock at its IPO price. One of those parties was Amazon, and the American e-commerce giant appears to have pulled the trigger Friday afternoon on its buy.

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 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, after its various pre-IPO holdings and warrants converted to Class A shares in the company now that it is publicly traded. When considering its previous ownership, Amazon now owns about 22% of Rivian.

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. Yahoo Finance indicates, for example, that Rivian is worth north of $127 billion today at the close of the week’s trading cycle.

Given that Rivian built just 12 cars in Q3, the company is worth around $10 billion per manufactured unit from its last reporting period. That ratio will fall in coming quarters, but underscores just how much of Rivian’s valuation is predicated on future results, and not past performance.