Faraday Future: the rise and fall (and rise) of the electric car startup – The Verge

Faraday Future launches investigation into financial fraud allegations

2021-11-15T17:27:33-05:00

Faraday Future is launching an investigation into recent allegations of financial fraud at the startup, including claims from a recent short-seller report by J Capital. The EV startup's board of directors has formed a "special committee of independent directors," which has hired a law firm to perform the investigation.

J Capital had accused Faraday Future of lying about the number of reservations it had collected for its ultra-expensive electric SUV, the FF91. It also accused Faraday Future's founder Jia Yueting of unfairly benefitting from the startup's recent public listing, which it accomplished after merging with a special purpose acqui …

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Palantir invested $25 million in Faraday Future

2021-08-26T16:26:28-04:00

Data-mining firm Palantir invested $25 million in Faraday Future shortly before the electric vehicle startup became a publicly traded company in July, according to a previously unreported Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) document filed late last week.

In addition, Faraday Future signed a commercial contract to use Palantir's software, according to one of Palantir's most recent SEC filings. Neither company disclosed how much Faraday Future is paying, though Palantir's filing notes the contract will last between four and six years. Representatives for both companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Palantir says i …

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Faraday Future just became a publicly traded company

2021-07-22T11:54:57-04:00

Electric vehicle startup Faraday future is a publicly traded company.

It's okay, I'll give you a moment. I've been reporting on Faraday Future for four years and it has even stunned me a few times in recent weeks. But it's true: today, the startup's shares began trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange, and a fresh $1 billion was dumped into its battered war chest.

Electric vehicle companies are going public left and right thanks to the rise in popularity of special purpose acquisition companies (which you can read a great explanation of here). So are companies that supply some of the new technologies that make EVs possible, like lithium-ion b …

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Faraday Future was investigated by the Department of Labor in 2020

2021-04-19T12:23:22-04:00

Faraday Future was investigated by the Department of Labor in 2020, though the electric vehicle startup says the matter was "resolved," according to a previously unreported passage in a recent regulatory filing.

The startup didn't say what the investigation was about or how much it paid to resolve the legal matter. Faraday Future's former chief lawyer has claimed in a lawsuit that the company was previously inspected by the Department of Homeland Security's United States Citizenship and Immigration Services division in 2018, though the startup denied this in court filings. A spokesperson for Faraday Future declined to comment on the investi …

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Faraday Future is going public and raising $1 billion

2021-01-28T08:02:54-05:00

Faraday Future is going to become a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq stock exchange and is raising around $1 billion in the process.

The troubled EV startup announced Thursday that it is indeed merging with special purpose acquisition corporation (or SPAC) Property Solutions, as first reported by Bloomberg earlier this month.

About $230 million will come from the money that Property Solutions raised in its SPAC. The other $775 million will come from a new funding round happening concurrently with the merger. Geely, China's biggest privately owned automaker, is contributing "less than 10 percent" of that new investment, and $175 millio …

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Faraday Future’s best shot at redemption may be a SPAC

2021-01-19T15:02:50-05:00

Despite a whirlwind of electric vehicle SPAC mergers in the last few months, there's still one startup flying solo that's arguably the best-positioned. Yes, Faraday Future is still on the market - though maybe not for long.

Sure, Faraday Future is distressed and its electric SUV is outrageous, but it developed valid technology over the last few years that is further along than what some competitors have. It will take a lot of money to get that vehicle over the proverbial finish line. Lucky for Faraday Future, though, money is now incredibly easy to come by.

In the last seven months alone, a half-dozen startups have gone public or announced …

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Faraday Future founder’s bankruptcy spiked a potential deal in the Middle East

2020-07-24T16:04:32-04:00

Late last year, Faraday Future was supposed to meet with a Middle East sovereign wealth fund to discuss an investment that could have helped pull the struggling EV startup out of its perpetual financial nosedive. But the wealth fund retracted the invite shortly after Faraday Future founder Jia Yueting filed for bankruptcy to resolve billions of dollars of personal debt, according to a previously unreported transcript of one of the Chinese tycoon's Chapter 11 proceedings.

"We were invited by a government entity to go to the Middle East to a sovereign fund, and the minute that we filed the Chapter 11 case and it became clear the financial iss …

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Judge approves Faraday Future founder’s personal bankruptcy plan

2020-05-22T18:48:53-04:00

Seven months after he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to deal with $3.6 billion in personal debt, the reorganization plan laid out by Jia Yueting - the tycoon founder of troubled EV startup Faraday Future - has been approved by a judge.

In overly simple terms, the majority of the people and companies he owes money to - largely thanks to the collapse of LeEco, the overly-leveraged tech conglomerate he built his fortune with in China - have agreed to swap their debt claims for pieces of Jia's ownership stake in Faraday Future. They now only have a shot of being made whole if and when the struggling startup successfully completes a public list …

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Faraday Future gets a $9 million government pandemic loan

2020-04-20T15:26:40-04:00

Electric vehicle startup Faraday Future has obtained a $9,167,800 loan from the Small Business Association's Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was recently launched to help small businesses keep people employed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company tells The Verge.

That's close to the $10 million maximum allowed in the program, and the loan will be 100 percent forgiven as long as Faraday Future uses it for payroll, interest on mortgages, rent, or utilities, and doesn't lay off any of the 400 or so employees who are still there for the next eight weeks (or rehires any who were recently let go). News of the loan was first reported …

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DOJ intervenes in Faraday Future founder’s bankruptcy after ‘dishonest behavior’

2019-12-18T12:38:04-05:00

The Department of Justice has accused Faraday Future founder Jia Yueting of "engaging in dishonest behavior" during his Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, and it has filed a motion to appoint a new trustee to take control of the Chinese billionaire's estate.

The new motion, if approved, could dramatically change the course of Jia's bankruptcy case, which involves billions of dollars of debt owed to more than 100 creditors in China, and which has been hotly contested in the two months since he filed. While Jia claims his bankruptcy does not directly involve Faraday Future, he has claimed that a speedy outcome is necessary in order for the EV …

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