Rivian goes public in one of the biggest IPOs ever

Electric vehicle startup Rivian is now a publicly traded company after executing one of the biggest initial public offerings in history. Rivian shares started trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange Wednesday at around $78 per share. That gave Rivian an overall valuation of nearly $80 billion and helped it net $12 billion in fresh cash, despite the fact that it only just recently started to make and ship its first electric pickup trucks.

It’s the sixth-largest IPO ever on a US stock exchange, according to Bloomberg, and it’s hard to imagine the company picking a better time to debut. Tesla has generated an incredible amount of interest in electric vehicles _and_is now one of the most highly valued companies in the world. The public markets...