PARK CITY, Utah — Rivian Automotive CEO RJ Scaringe envisions a day in the not-so-distant future when the electric vehicle maker’s manufacturing employees will have a new type of colleague: humanoid robots.

“There’s going to be thousands of people that are collaborating alongside these robots. They’re going to be taking pictures, ‘Hey, check this out! My co-worker’s name is Phil, and he’s a robot,’” Scaringe said during a media event for the launch of the Rivian R2 EV.

The 43-year-old automotive enthusiast and tech entrepreneur started a robotics company last year called Mind Robotics. The company has raised more than $1 billion, according to Scaringe.

Humanoid robots are designed to be shaped and move like people. Artificial intelligence algorithms power their abilities along with complex hardware like semiconductors. Proponents say they could be used in various settings, from factories to hospitality and even in the home, while others have raised concerns about the devices replacing human jobs.

Scaringe said the company expects to reveal its first product in less than a year, with Rivian as a large minority shareholder and launch customer. Mind currently has roughly 20 open positions ranging from software and hardware engineers to data architects, according to its website.

Scaringe, who is executive chair and acting CEO of Mind, told CNBC that the plan is to keep the robotics company separate from Rivian, as opposed to the automaker partially shifting to make humanoid robots, like Tesla CEO Elon Musk is doing with his company.

“We have a deep relationship, and that was actually how we structured it,” Scaringe said during an interview. “A big part of structuring the business was to allow me to be able to spend time on both.”

The robotics strategy adds to a narrative of Scaringe doing things differently than Musk, despite obvious similarities in their companies. There have been enough comparisons that Rivian has even been called the “anti-Tesla” and Scaringe has been referred to as the “anti-Elon.”

“I’d say there’s a lot of alignment there, and I think that’s because, obviously, I’m biased, but I think they’re right … that autonomy is a super important technology,” Scaringe said about Tesla and Rivian. “But in terms of the products, they, in many ways, couldn’t be more different.”

So far Rivian and Mind are assisting each other, though, much like Musk’s companies have also done during developmental phases. That includes Musk’s xAI company merging with SpaceX before the company’s record-setting initial public offering on Friday as well as SpaceX purchasing vehicles from Tesla.

Scaringe said Rivian will be a “huge beneficiary” of Mind, which is using data from Rivian for training its AI models. Along with Rivian’s equity stake, the automaker will be Mind’s first customer for the robots.

“We realized it was such a big opportunity that deserved to be its own company,” said Scaringe. He said he believes there is a multitrillion-dollar total addressable market for industrial labor.

Scaringe was visibly excited when speaking with media about the potential for AI and humanoid robotics, calling it “one of the most exciting times, perhaps in human history.”

“One hundred years from now, they’re going to be inheriting the work that we do over our lifetimes, and so I just think we’re so lucky that we get to be alive at the birth of AI,” Scaringe said.

Despite the optimism for humanoid robots, Scaringe said he expects the devices to work alongside humans rather than replace them completely for the foreseeable future, saying it takes a “long time” for vehicle assembly plants to become so-called “dark factories” which can be almost entirely run by robots.

“What I see happening is the simplest tasks will be taken on by robots. The more complex tasks that require higher levels of reasoning or more complex, more tactile levels of dexterity [will be done by humans],” he said.

Scaringe said manufacturers are dealing with an “extreme lack of labor,” from other automakers. Rivian currently has more than 30 open manufacturing and engineering jobs, according to the company’s website.

The need for such workers, as well as the rapid development of AI, Scaringe believes, will mean human employees will be working alongside a robot named “Phil” far sooner than they may expect.

“The rate at which this is moving is far faster than I’d say — like an order of magnitude faster — than the average person in society understands,” he said. “That’s going to be a particularly big challenge in the short-term to just have the average person … realize how fast the models are learning and how capable they are at doing almost everything.”

— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.

Drugmakers are only months into introducing GLP-1 pills and navigating huge changes in how patients pay for weight-loss drugs.

Even so, they’re already outlining their visions for the future of obesity drugs.

At the American Diabetes Association’s Scientific Sessions in New Orleans last week, drugmakers pitched doctors and investors on the idea of new shots and pills, drugs that can be taken less frequently, and new treatments beyond GLP-1s that could come with fewer side effects. The attendees debated where all these new treatments might fit in, especially with Eli Lilly currently dominating the market for shots and impressing attendees with data from its experimental triple-acting drug retatrutide that produced the most weight loss seen yet.

Lilly and rival Novo Nordisk showcased new GLP-1 pills they each introduced earlier this year. Both companies made the case that oral options are bringing more people into the market for weight loss drugs, with Novo touting that prescriptions of its Wegovy pill reached more than 3 million just five months into the launch.

Behind the two market leaders are a wave of new entrants hoping to get into the massive market in the coming years.

Structure Therapeutics and AstraZeneca each shared mid-stage data from their respective GLP-1 pills. Should those oral drugs succeed in Phase 3 trials, they would likely come to the market around 2029, three years behind Lilly, which introduced its small molecule pill Foundayo earlier this year (the Wegovy pill is an oral peptide).

Structure Therapeutics CEO Ray Stevens thinks there will still be plenty of room in the market by then.

“Who wins at the end of the day with competition? Patients, and that’s really what this is all about,” Stevens said, adding that being the second small molecule drug will be important. “We’re really pushing hard to get into that second position behind orforglipron, now Foundayo.”

Pfizer also unveiled mid-stage data from a shot it gained through its $10 billion acquisition of Metsera. The drug showed the potential to be given monthly, which Pfizer thinks would be more convenient than the currently weekly shots. Another drugmaker, Amgen, is testing a different drug that could be given monthly or possibly even quarterly.

Susan Sweeney, Amgen’s executive vice president of obesity and related conditions, said the company sees an advantage in people not needing to take a weekly injection and instead thinking about treatment as little as four times a year.

“For somebody who’s lived with obesity for a long time, it can be a major advantage in not remembering your disease,” she said.

Some companies are looking beyond GLP-1 and other hot targets like GIP and glucagon to emerging areas like amylin, another hormone produced in the pancreas that helps people feel full. One company is Zealand Pharma, which presented mid-stage data from a drug called petrelintide that it’s developing with Roche.

The experimental shot helped people lose almost 11% of their body weight — less than the currently available injections Wegovy and Zepbound. But Zealand touted that fewer people taking the drug vomited than those in the placebo group.

“I truly believe that when these amylin [drugs] launch, we can have that, what I’ve described as an iPhone moment, because patients are so aware of the experience they have on the GLP-1s, and once you launch a new modality that gives you a better experience, people will queue up to get access to that new weight loss medication rather than staying on the more cumbersome medicines,” said Zealand CEO Adam Steensberg.

Like the other potential new entrants, it will be years before Zealand’s drug becomes available. Market leader Lilly is developing its own amylin analogue called eloralintide that’s already in Phase 3 trials.

At this year’s ADA, Lilly also presented Phase 3 results from its triple agonist retatrutide. That drug activates the GLP-1, GIP and glucagon receptors, producing dramatic weight loss.

At the highest dose, people lost an average of 28% of their body weight when they took retatrutide and stayed on it as prescribed in the trial. Lilly CEO Dave Ricks sees the drug a way to help people with a body mass index over 40, or the highest classification of obesity, achieve a healthy weight, something that’s not possible if they have an average response to Lilly’s current shot Zepbound.

“We showed what’s possible, which is meaningful: Almost half the people lose more than 30% of their body weight,” Ricks said. “So if you do start at a higher level, you can really get to a more healthy state, which is everyone’s goal, I think.”