Having raised nearly $6 billion in funding, Rivian is an electric vehicle manufacturer that is set to release new electric vehicles next year. The company has also secured a deal with a major investor Amazon for 100,000 delivery vans.
Tesla has recently accused Rivian of job poaching (essentially stealing employees) and acquiring insider information. According to Bloomberg, roughly 178 ex-Tesla employees have been hired by Rivian. In fact, seventy of these ex-employees just joined Rivian directly. This makes the allegation of stealing trade secrets even more plausible.
In the lawsuit, Tesla has claimed that they have been “the number one target from which to acquire information”. They went into more detail in their lawsuit:
In about the past week, Tesla has discovered disturbing pattern of employees who are departing for Rivian surreptitiously stealing Tesla trade secret, confidential, and proprietary information.
Tesla also allegedly has evidence that Rivian tried coercing an employee into acquiring confidential information. Having previously sueing other automotive companies like Xpeng Motors, Tesla has no problem taking legal action against competitors.
Rivian have defended themselves and said that the lawsuit goes against their company policies. The case is to take place at the California Super Court in Santa Clara County.
