Mind Robotics has appointed former Ford executive Doug Field as president to run the robotics startup, TechCrunch reported. Field will oversee the company's efforts to build universally capable robots for industrial work.
Field led Ford's electric vehicle and software division until earlier this year. He previously served as vice president of special projects at Apple, where he directed the Project Titan autonomous vehicle effort. Earlier in his career, Field managed Mac hardware engineering at Apple before leaving in 2013 to become Tesla's chief vehicle engineer for the Model 3 sedan. He returned to Apple in 2018 before Ford hired him in 2021.
Investors have provided over $1 billion in financing to Mind Robotics since Rivian chief executive RJ Scaringe founded the company in 2025. Scaringe acts as CEO and chair of the startup while keeping it separate from Rivian. Rivian holds an equity stake in Mind Robotics, supplies artificial intelligence training data, and will serve as the first commercial customer for the robots.
Scaringe praised the appointment, stating that Field has an incredible ability to foster teams that deliver products that reset expectations. Field stated that integrating AI and robotics is one of the most important and difficult engineering challenges, highlighting the startup's plan to deploy and learn directly inside operational automotive plants.
The company has not confirmed whether it is building a humanoid robot or pursuing a different design. Mind Robotics is engineering its machines with dexterity and physical reasoning for industrial environments, but has not shown any hardware publicly. The startup is currently hiring across 32 open roles.
