The .2 billion startup has its sights set on an IPO — but definitely not a SPAC
Rimac Group created made headlines in June after it raised €500 million ($537 million) in a Series D round led by Goldman Sachs and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The deal valued the Croatian startup at $2.2 billion, prompting the question: how has this company managed where so many other EV makers have struggled?
Rimac, which merged its hypercar division with French supercar maker Bugatti in November, has taken a two-pronged approach the industry has not seen before: it continues to create hypercars like Bugatti Rimac, while leveraging the knowledge gained from that. process has been obtained to develop technology to supply other automakers through its subsidiary Rimac Technology. The client list includes Porsche, a quadruple investor who now owns a 20% stake in the company.
Founded in 2009 in the garage of Mate Rimac, then a 21-year-old student, the company has become a Croatian sensation, one of the two unicorns in the country, alongside Infobip, an IT and telecommunications company.
“I see their secret sauce as the complementary nature of the two companies – how the hypercar test bench creates value for the B2B supplier,” said Stephen Beck, founder and managing partner of management consultancy firm cg42. “The two companies feed off each other without really competing with each other.”