Electric vehicle startup Rivian announced Thursday it will establish an East Coast headquarters in Atlanta with plans to hire hundreds of employees as it prepares to break ground on its Georgia factory next year.

The Irvine, California-based automaker signed a lease for 45,000 square feet of office space within the Junction Krog District building along the Beltline Eastside Trail. The office will employ about 100 workers by the end of 2025 and will expand to 500 by the end of next year, Rivian officials told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The new office investment is one of the largest such announcements so far this year in metro Atlanta. It is also a significant move for Rivian as it prepares to start construction on its $5 billion factory, which was originally slated to open in 2024 before being put on hold.

Rivian also faces headwinds such as the new Republican-backed federal spending plan that removes incentives for EVs and other clean energy projects.

“We are excited to establish our East Coast head office in Atlanta,” Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said in a news release. “Atlanta embodies so much that makes Georgia great — top talent, exceptional creativity and a desire to always be moving forward.”

Completed in 2023, Junction Krog District is a six-story office building at 667 Auburn Ave. NE developed by Atlanta-based Portman Holdings. Rivian is the first announced office tenant for the roughly 135,000-square-foot building, and the automaker will lease the building’s lobby space and top floor.

Claire McDonough, Rivian’s chief financial officer, told the AJC the building fits the company’s environmentally focused brand, especially its Beltline connectivity and top-floor balcony.

“It feels very Rivian in nature,” she said. “You step out onto the deck of the building and you see a forest of trees.”

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and Gov. Brian Kemp celebrated the announcement.

“Atlanta continues to lead in EV innovation and technology integration,” Dickens said, “and Rivian’s growing presence here reinforces our city’s role in shaping our future economy.”

Kemp has championed recruiting Rivian’s planned factory roughly an hour east of Atlanta in southern Morgan and Walton counties, a project promising to employ 7,500 workers when complete. He said the new office investment is a testament to “the unmatched value of Georgia’s talent and the location of their East Coast Headquarters in Atlanta is the latest demonstration of their commitment to the Peach State.”

Expediting expansion

Rivian emerged as an investor darling in late 2021 as a potential rival to Tesla, buoyed by its flagship electric pickup truck, SUV and delivery van models.

Rivian’s rapid growth plans hit multiple snags and setbacks, and the EV maker has yet to turn a profit. All the while, Rivian hinged its financial future and expansion plans to its proposed Georgia factory and a new crossover SUV called the R2, a model advertised with a $45,000 price tag.

In early 2026, Rivian plans to begin producing R2s at its sole existing factory in Normal, Illinois. Once R2 production is underway, the company will look at expanding into the European market, an effort that logistically will be helped by the forthcoming East Coast headquarters.

The Georgia factory is designed to expand R2 production after the vehicle’s launch. A groundbreaking is planned in 2026 with production starting by 2028.

“The work that we’ve been doing over the course of the last handful of years is to ensure that we can reduce the timeline between start of construction (of the Georgia factory) and start of production for future vehicles out of the site,” McDonough said.

The roughly 2,000-acre site along I-20 has been graded and is undergoing utility installation, she said.

State and local leaders approved a $1.5 billion incentive package to recruit Rivian’s factory, which requires the automaker to build its promised plant and meet hiring requirements to see the bulk of those financial benefits and tax savings.

Similarly, McDonough said Rivian has to break ground on its factory to tap into a $6.6 billion construction loan that was finalized in the waning days of the Biden administration.

The loan’s approval by the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office has been criticized by President Donald Trump and his allies. Georgia’s senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, lobbied for many of those clean energy incentives, including Rivian’s loan.

“The loan is set up as more of a project finance instrument,” McDonough said. “So it does require Rivian to have broken ground and continue to invest in the site before we’ll have a timeline for an initial (loan) draw out of the facility, which is really by design.”

No government-backed incentives were offered for the East Coast headquarters, the Georgia Department of Economic Development confirmed. The office’s 500 jobs are also a separate employment pool from Rivian’s 7,500 promised factory workers.

Cox Enterprises, which owns the AJC, also owns about a 3% stake in Rivian.