All posts tagged: faraday future

EV startup Faraday Future paid .5M to company tied to founder Jia Yueting

EV startup Faraday Future paid $7.5M to company tied to founder Jia Yueting

Published by skeptic

Faraday Future paid around $7.5 million to a company controlled by its founder Jia Yueting in 2025, according to a new regulatory filing. The long-struggling electric vehicle startup made the payments in a year when it delivered only four vehicles and lost nearly $400 million. The company has pivoted to selling cheaper vans and robots imported from China. The payments happened while Faraday Future was still under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which was probing what are known as “related party transactions” between the company and entities related to or controlled by Jia, Faraday’s own filings have shown. The SEC was also investigating whether Faraday Future properly represented the level of control Jia had over the company when it went public in 2021, and whether it lied about early sales of its EVs in 2023. The SEC dropped its four-year-long investigation in March, as TechCrunch first reported, despite having sent notices to Faraday Future, Jia, and other executives last year stating that investigators were recommending an enforcement action. The closure of the …

The SEC drops its four-year-old investigation into EV startup Faraday Future

The SEC drops its four-year-old investigation into EV startup Faraday Future

Published by skeptic

The Securities and Exchange Commission has closed its investigation into electric vehicle startup Faraday Future, despite SEC staff on the case recommending an enforcement action last year, TechCrunch has learned. Four sources familiar with the investigation, who were granted anonymity to speak about the government case, told TechCrunch that the SEC informed the company and people involved in the probe about the closure this past week. The dismissal of the case comes amid a historic drop in enforcement actions by the SEC, which only initiated four cases against publicly-traded companies in its 2025 fiscal year, a recent report shows. The SEC did not respond to an after-hours request for comment. The investigation into Faraday Future lasted for nearly four years. The SEC was looking at whether the EV startup made “false and misleading statements” when it went public in a 2021 merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), and was also probing whether Faraday Future faked the sales of its first electric vehicles in 2023 — a claim that’s been made by at least …

Prince Andrew advisor pitched Jeffrey Epstein on investing in EV startups like Lucid Motors

Prince Andrew advisor pitched Jeffrey Epstein on investing in EV startups like Lucid Motors

Published by skeptic

Electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors was scrambling to raise a Series D funding round in 2017. It had courted Ford as a potential investor, but Jia Yueting, the founder of rival EV startup Faraday Future, had quietly amassed around a 30% stake and was essentially blocking new investors. David Stern, a mysterious businessman and close advisor to former Prince Andrew, saw an opportunity to break the logjam: bring in Jeffrey Epstein.  “Ford will likely be lead in $400m Series D in Lucid. Big strategic move,” Stern wrote to Epstein in emails released last week as part of the Department of Justice’s latest disclosure of 3 million documents related to Epstein. Jia “has massive cash issues” at Faraday, he wrote, and needs to “sell now to make payroll for his other business.” It wasn’t the first EV startup Stern pitched Epstein, and it wouldn’t be the last, according to hundreds of documents reviewed by TechCrunch.  At the time, legacy automakers and newly minted startups, fueled by the breakthrough success of Tesla and progress by Google’s self-driving …

Good enough for Tesla? Faraday Future pivots to humanoid robots

Good enough for Tesla? Faraday Future pivots to humanoid robots

Published by skeptic

After failing to deliver its long-promised “Tesla killer” EV and missing the Bitcoin- and Doge-fueled profit wave that helped propel $TSLA, Faraday Future ($FFIE) is hoping it’s got what it takes to finally pull ahead of Elon Musk: a full line of consumer robots. Faraday Future announced the formation of FF EAI-Robotics Inc., a new California-based, robot-focused subsidiary of the electric van maker assembler, marking the official launch of its first lineup of “Embodied AI” humanoid and quadruped robots. The news comes just days after Elon Musk announced Tesla would honorably discharge its flagship Model S and X EV line and redirect that production capacity toward Optimus, the humanoid robot Musk insists represents a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity for his electric car tech brand. For their part, Faraday Future seem to agree – but they really, really want you to think this move has been a long time coming: Advertisement – scroll for more content This move is a natural extension of the AI DNA that has been embedded in FF since day one. It is also the …