Wow, these past couple of months EV has been getting hotter and hotter, we have Fisker Automotive set to join the market through a merger with a blank check company Spartan Energy Acquisition Corp (SPAQ).
Fisker said it raised $50 million separately this week and the company said the funds would finance the next phase of development work on the Fisker Ocean luxury SUV, expected to launch in 2022.
The $50 million Series C funding round was funded by Moore Strategic Investments, New York ‘s private investment firm of hedge-fund founder Louis Bacon.
In 2016, Henrik Fisker, a onetime Aston-Martin designer, founded the Los Angeles business with plans to start selling the Ocean at a starting price of $37,500.
His former automotive maker, Fisker Automotive, filed for bankruptcy in 2013, following a $1.4 billion burn in private investment and taxpayer-funded loans.
Fisker Automotive, Karma Automotive & Spartan Energy Acquisition Corp (SPAQ)
Two electric car companies with a long common background, Fisker Inc. and Karma Automotive, both revealed this week that they have raised millions of dollars.
The capital comes at a time when interest in funding capital-hungry electric vehicle companies appears to be revived, thanks in large part to Tesla’s skyrocketing stock price and the early success of the recent public listing of hydrogen trucking company Nikola.
In reality, Fisker Inc. is considering following in the footsteps of Nikola and becoming a publicly traded corporation through a reverse merger, a person familiar with the deal tells The Verge. The startup is in negotiations with Apollo Global Management to combine with the publicly traded “white check” business of the private equity group, known as Spartan Energy Acquisition Corp.
Spartan was established in 2018 as a way for Apollo to invest in the energy industry and will only have to acquire a company until August 14th or it will be dissolved, with investors and shareholders getting their money back. (Spartan runners are seeking to extend the date until February 2021, according to a new filing.)
Meanwhile, it has $50 million of new capital coming in from the investment firm of Louis Bacon, Moore Strategic Ventures, LLC. That’s more than triple the amount of money that Fisker Inc. has previously received from the building company’s venture arm Caterpillar and the family behind oil drilling company Schlumberger.
Although the hype surrounding Tesla and Nikola may have helped knock down some money loose for Fisker Inc. and Karma Automotive, there are still plenty of other EV startups with a presence in the US. Chinese EV pioneer Byton, which has its headquarters in Silicon Valley in North America, recently announced that it is suspending its global operations for six months due to money problems.
Faraday Future, which is located in Los Angeles, is still in limbo, but its founder has just wrapped up his personal bankruptcy case, and the company claims it will now be able to attract investors who may have been skittish. Seres, born SF Motors, dropped off the map after a small splash a few years ago in Silicon Valley ago.
