One of the most common mistakes in reading an EV automaker is to lump all its spending together and conclude it is simply losing enormous amounts of money. The filings are more careful than that, and so should the reader be. There are two fundamentally different kinds of spend, and they carry opposite meanings.
Rivian's annual report makes the categories explicit. Its Form 10-K, filed February 12, 2026 for the year ended December 31, 2025, repeatedly frames its constraints around "working capital, operating expenditures, capital expenditures" and the ability to obtain additional financing. The primary document is on sec.gov, indexed by EdgarBeast. Those two expenditure types deserve separate analysis.
Capital expenditures, or capex, is money spent to build durable productive capacity: a paint shop, a stamping line, battery-pack assembly, tooling for a new platform. It hits cash now but creates an asset that produces vehicles — and revenue — for years. Crucially, much of it is discretionary in timing. A company under cash pressure can slow capex by deferring a plant expansion, trading future capacity for present runway.
Operating expenditures, or opex, is the recurring cost of running the business this quarter: salaries, materials, logistics, the loss on each vehicle sold before scale economics kick in. Opex is far harder to cut without shrinking the company. A young automaker is supposed to have heavy opex losses early; the question is whether they narrow per vehicle as volume rises.
Put together, the right reading is a ratio of intent. High capex with controlled opex and a credible financing plan describes a company investing toward scale. High opex with no path to per-unit improvement describes a company struggling regardless of capex. Rivian's own filings tie all of it to "the ability to obtain additional financing" — the reminder that for a pre-scale automaker, both spends are ultimately a race against the next capital raise.