(Bloomberg) — Rimac Group has raised another €500 million ($536.6 million) to help it build future Porsches, Bugattis, and Koenigseggs.
SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Goldman Sachs Asset Management led the latest round of funding, which also included Rimac shareholders Investindustrial and Porsche. Mate Rimac, who founded his eponymous company in a garage in 2009, remains the largest shareholder.
“It’s great to have Porsche on board, but also, you know, we don’t want to be fully dependent on them,” Rimac said during a call with reporters on May 31. Porsche holds a 45% stake in Bugatti Rimac, the company formed in 2021 between Bugatti, Porsche, and Rimac.
Formed in January, Rimac Group is an umbrella company that holds a 55% stake in Bugatti Rimac and 100% of Rimac Technology, an independent subsidiary formed in January. (Bugatti Rimac owns 100% of Rimac Automobili, the group’s hypercar division.) Porsche owns the remaining 45% of Bugatti Rimac.
The Croatia-based group oversees the manufacture of such multimillion-dollar supercars as the Bugatti Chiron and Bugatti Bolide, plus upcoming vehicles that bear the Rimac brand name, like the $2.4 million Rimac Nevera electric hypercar. The Nevera will see its first customer deliveries in “the next few weeks,” Mate Rimac said.
It’s also working on unspecified projects for automakers such as Aston Martin, Koenigsegg, and Porsche. A spokesperson declined to comment on specific vehicles.
Mate Rimac said he plans to use the additional funding to hire 700 more workers and by next year complete construction on a campus and factory that can house 2,500 people—the largest such complex in Croatia, according to Rimac. It was unclear how large the campus is, with some Rimac documents claiming 25 acres and others claiming 50 acres. The space will go toward building Rimac-branded supercars, Bugatti supercars, and other high-end vehicles the company declined to name.
“Most of the capital will actually be used for scaling up to meet the demand for batteries and powertrains and the other systems to help the car industry go electric,” Mate Rimac said. Rimac Technology will produce tens of thousands of components annually, with products ranging from hybrid and fully electric battery systems to full rolling chassis, he said. Such vehicles, technology, and components could go to existing clients that have said they will sell hybrid and electric vehicles such as the Koenigsegg Gemera, Aston Martin Valkyrie, and Porsche 718.
“We were already convinced of the company’s potential in 2018 and are pleased that we were able to contribute to its progress and current success with our commitment,” said Lutz Meschke, the deputy chairman of the executive board of Porsche AG, in a statement about the latest infusion of funds. “With new investors on board, Rimac is further expanding its position in electromobility and thus becoming an even stronger partner for Porsche.”
The announcement comes after strong progress for the now not-so-fledgling brand and its uncommonly bold founder. Last year it received 150 orders for Bugatti cars, a record number, which sold out all of its vehicles until 2025. The range-topping $4.7 million Bolide hypercar sold out all of its 40 unit allocations two months after it debuted.
Amid this growth, Rimac batted away rumors that one of its existing partnerships with Hyundai had soured. In 2019, Hyundai and Kia invested $90 million in the Croatian company to develop at least two vehicles with the partnership—a fully electric variant of Hyundai’s N sports car and a performance fuel-cell vehicle. A spokesperson for the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding when production would start for those two vehicles.
“The growth has been quite persistent over time,” Mate Rimac said of the company headcount. “We are doubling basically every one or half, two years.”
Contrary to where the big market is for luxury saloons like Mercedes-Maybach’s S-Class, Rimac’s growth doesn’t come from dealerships in China. Instead, it comes from Europe and North America.
“Affluent Chinese buyers usually don’t buy supercars in China, for different reasons,” he said, noting regulatory challenges that make selling supercars in mainland China complicated and expensive. “They usually buy them in London or in Sydney or in Toronto—in the Western cities where they have their other residences.”
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