What’s the ‘secret sauce’ behind Croatian EV maker Rimac? – TechCrunch

The startup, valued at $2.2B, has sights set on an IPO — but certainly not a SPAC

Rimac Group made headlines in June after it raised €500 million ($537 million) in a Series D round led by Goldman Sachs and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The deal valued the Croatian startup at $2.2 billion, prompting the question: How has this company succeeded where so many other EV makers have struggled?

Rimac, which merged its hypercar division with French supercar maker Bugatti in November, has taken a two-pronged approach the industry has not seen before: It’s continuing to make hypercars as Bugatti Rimac while using the knowledge gleaned from that process to develop technology to supply other automakers through its Rimac Technology subsidiary. Its client list includes Porsche, a four-time investor that now holds a 20% stake in the company.

Founded in 2009 in the garage of Mate Rimac, then a 21-year-old student, the company has become a Croatian sensation, one of two unicorns in the country, alongside Infobip, an IT and telecommunications business.

“I view their secret sauce as the complementary nature of the two businesses — how the test bed for the hypercar creates value for the B2B supplier,” said Stephen Beck, founder and managing partner of management consultancy cg42. “The two businesses feed off of each other without really competing against one another.”