Jia is reportedly now out of the picture, and Faraday Future is one of the many other EV startups to announce a SPAC merger. PIF pledged more than $1 billion to Lucid Motors in 2018 (just a few weeks shy of the slaying of Jamal Khashoggi) in exchange for majority ownership in a startup that aligned with the clean energy ambitions touted by the Kingdom’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman.Īccording to the investor presentation published Monday, PIF currently owns 85 percent of Lucid Motors following a new injection of $600 million that is supposed to sustain the startup until the SPAC deal is closed. Lucid Motors eventually found a savior in Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, or PIF. In the meantime, Lucid Motors turned to hedge funds for loans to keep the lights on, using its intellectual property as collateral, as The Verge first reported in 2018. (Ford ultimately forged its own path into EVs, though it has supplemented that effort with a partnership with Volkswagen and an investment in buzzy EV startup Rivian.) Jia became an obstacle in the company’s fundraising efforts, which included solicitations from major OEMs like Ford. Complicating matters was the fact that Jia Yueting, the founder of fellow EV startup Faraday Future, wound up owning around 30 percent of Lucid Motors. Like many of its peers, Lucid Motors struggled for a time as it searched for new funding. It has since grown to more than 2,000 employees and begun construction on a $700 million factory in Arizona where the Air will be built. It was initially focused on battery technology, but ultimately pivoted into becoming an electric vehicle startup a few years ago. Led by Peter Rawlinson, a former Tesla engineer who helped bring the Model S to life, Lucid Motors was founded way back in 2007 as Atieva. Lucid Motors is the latest EV startup to do a SPAC merger
It’s expected to close in the second quarter of this year, and Lucid Motors’ shares will trade on the NYSE under the ticker “LCID.” The deal values Lucid Motors at $24 billion. Some will go to fees, the rest will go to the newly combined version of Lucid Motors. Some $2.5 billion will come from a new round of funding running concurrently with the merger, which is anchored by Saudi Arabia but includes BlackRock, Fidelity Management, and others. Roughly $2.1 billion of that cash will come from Churchill. Bloomberg first reported that Lucid Motors and Churchill - which is run by investor Michael Klein, who has orchestrated deals for Saudi Arabia in the past - were in talks back in January. Specifically, Lucid Motors is merging with Churchill Capital Corp IV, which is already listed on the NYSE. Much like many other startups in the automotive space have done over the past year, Lucid Motors is skipping the traditional path to becoming a publicly traded company and is instead merging with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. An electric SUV is slated to follow in 2023. The California startup, which is majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, plans to start shipping its first luxury electric vehicle - the 500-mile range Air sedan - later this year. Lucid Motors is going to become a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange in a deal that will leave the electric vehicle startup with $4.4 billion in cash.
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