The joint venture will be headed by Wassym Bensaid (Rivian) and Carsten Helbing (Volkswagen Group). Developers and software engineers from both companies will join the joint venture. Teams will be based in Palo Alto, California initially, and three other sites are in development in North America and Europe. By combining their complementary expertise, the two companies plan to reduce development costs and scale new technologies more quickly. The goal is to be able to offer customers the best technological solution as early as possible.