For most of automotive history, a car company's revenue was simple: it sold cars. That is changing, and the change shows up in a line called "software and services." When a young automaker starts emphasizing that line, it is signaling that it intends to be more than a vehicle manufacturer — and the filing tells you what is actually in the bucket.
Rivian's 2025 quarterly filings state that "software and services are a key part of our growth strategy," offering "a variety of software and services, including vehicle electrical architecture and software development services." Its annual report for 2024, filed February 24, 2025, notes that the cost of those revenues includes "vehicle electrical architecture and software development services funded by Volkswagen." The quarterly document is on sec.gov, surfaced via the EdgarBeast index.
Unpack the category. "Software and services" is everything the company earns that is not the sale of a vehicle: subscriptions, connected features, repair and service, and — distinctively for Rivian — selling its vehicle electrical-architecture and software-development expertise to another automaker. That last item is striking: it means the company is monetizing its engineering itself, not only the cars that engineering produces.
The Volkswagen reference is the concrete example. When the filing describes development services "funded by" a partner, it is describing Rivian being paid to develop electrical-architecture and software technology — turning an internal capability into an external revenue stream. That is a fundamentally different business from manufacturing: it sells know-how, not steel and cells.
Why should a reader care about the distinction? Because software and services often behave unlike vehicle sales. Some of it can be recurring rather than one-time, and its margin profile can differ sharply from the thin or negative margins of early vehicle production. A dollar of software-and-services revenue may not look like a dollar of vehicle revenue on the way to profit — which is exactly why the company breaks it out.
So the discipline is to read the automaker as potentially two businesses: one that builds vehicles and one that sells software and engineering. Rivian's 2025 filings put real weight on the second, calling it "a key part of our growth strategy." Watching whether that line grows, and on what margins, is increasingly central to judging where a modern EV maker is actually headed.