When investors are considering young electric vehicle (EV) stocks, Rivian Automotive (NASDAQ: RIVN) and Lucid Group (NASDAQ: LCID) often pop up. Both Rivian and Lucid have proved capable of developing compelling vehicles, albeit at lofty prices initially, and they have advanced EV technology and software.
More recently, Rivian achieved its first full-year gross profit in 2025, while Lucid has struggled to improve its unit economics, further separating the two in favor of Rivian. That said, Rivian just did something that Lucid investors groan about: raising capital and diluting shareholders. Does this change how investors should view the two?
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History shows the trend
A little Investing 101: Shareholder dilution is simply the decrease in a shareholder’s existing ownership percentage due to a company issuing new shares of stock for raising capital and employee compensation, among other factors. You can argue that investors are OK with some dilution because in theory, the company now has more capital to pursue growth, which in turn improves its investment potential.
The drawbacks are lower earnings per share and reduced voting power. That’s important to remember, because shareholder dilution might have made some Rivian investors cringe recently when it announced a public offering of 75 million shares of common stock, worth roughly $1.5 billion. This added capital comes at a cost, which works out to about 6% dilution.
The good news for Rivian investors is that the young EV maker has been reserved about raising capital and diluting shareholders. That’s primarily because of its large initial public offering’s cash cushion, and later capital injections from joint ventures such as one with Volkswagen – also a driving force behind Rivian’s full-year gross profit – and a $6.6 billion loan facility from the U.S. Department of Energy.
In the graph below, you can better see the longer-term trend between Rivian and Lucid.
The graph above was cut off at the beginning of 2025 because shortly thereafter, Lucid performed a 1-for-10 reverse stock split, drastically shrinking its share count and potentially misleading investors who don’t account for that (the graph could not).
A different way to look at it is to take Lucid’s reported 1.644 billion shares outstanding after its public debut via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. Adjusted for the split, that equates to a current figure of 164.4 million shares, compared to its current total of outstanding shares of about 390.26 million, giving us a total increased share count of around 137%. In comparison, Rivian’s lifetime share-count increase sits at about 58%, including the recent July offering.
