Rivian’s AI Agents Cut 15 Days From Every Close

Rivian built an artificial intelligence system on Amazon Bedrock and eliminated more than 15 days of manual work per close cycle, according to an Aug. 13 Amazon Web Services (AWS) blog post.

“The partnership with AWS and the implementation of AI-powered automation for our purchase order accruals represents a fundamental shift in how we approach finance operations,” Yogesh Yadav, senior director of global finance systems at Rivian, said in the post. “We’ve not only eliminated weeks of manual work each month, but we’ve created a scalable foundation that will support our growth.”

The accounting problem itself is hard. Custom tooling for building cars, like stamping dies and injection molds, can take one to two years to build, but Rivian often doesn’t get billed until 18 months or more after placing the order, the post said. Accounting rules still require the company to recognize that cost gradually over time, not all at once when the invoice finally shows up.

Why Rivian Stopped Hard-Coding Its Accounting Rules

Rivian and AWS skipped the usual fix, writing more rigid automation rules, because the actual rules kept changing depending on the size and type of each purchase. Instead, they stored Rivian’s real accounting procedures as plain-written instructions the AI reads directly, rather than hard-coding those rules into software that would need a developer to rewrite every time a policy changed, according to the post.