Rivian (RIVN) goes public this morning, and after adjusting the price up all week, it now values the company at almost $70 billion at the opening.

The automaker confirmed the pricing today:

“Rivian Automotive, Inc. (“Rivian”) today announced the pricing of its upsized initial public offering of 153,000,000 shares of Class A common stock at a public offering price of $78.00 per share. In addition, Rivian has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 22,950,000 shares of Class A common stock at the initial public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions. Rivian’s Class A common stock is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on November 10, 2021, under the ticker symbol “RIVN.” The offering is expected to close on November 15, 2021, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.”

At a $68 billion valuation, it automatically makes Rivian the eighth most valuable automaker in the world – ahead of companies like BMW and Ford, the latter of which is an important investor in the electric pickup truck company.

The valuation has been criticized as being high for a company that just started delivering its first few vehicles, but the IPO is also bringing in $11.9 billion in funds to help the company grow.

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe commented on the company’s missions as it goes public:

“To build the kind of future our kids and our kids’ kids deserve, extraordinary steps must be taken to stop the carbonization of our atmosphere and preserve our natural ecosystems. Over the next two decades we need to completely transform our planet’s transportation and energy systems, and today marks an important step in that journey.”

In order to help achieve that goal, Rivian is going to deploy a large volume of electric vehicles.

The company said that it is aiming to reach an annual production volume of 1 million electric vehicles by 2030.

For now, it is only producing handfuls of vehicles as it ramps up production of the R1T electric pickup truck and R1S SUV at its Normal, Illinois, factory.

The automaker claims to have 54,500 reservations for the vehicles on top of its order for 100,000 electric delivery vans from Amazon, a major investor in the company.

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