Lucid Motors is raising another $1 billion from its biggest financial backer, Saudi Arabia, as it looks to blunt the high costs associated with building and selling its luxury electric sedan.
The company announced in a Monday morning regulatory filing that Ayar Third Investment, an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, has agreed to purchase $1 billion worth of Lucid’s stock, which will add to the Kingdom’s current stake of around 60% ownership.
The fresh funding comes just a few weeks after Lucid told investors that it only plans to build around 9,000 of its Air electric vehicles this year, a slight bump over last year’s output. It lost $2.8 billion in 2023 and finished the year with just shy of $1.4 billion in cash and equivalents.
The company has struggled to find willing buyers for its expensive Air sedan, and has cut prices multiple times in recent months in an effort to boost sales. Lucid also plans to start building its electric Gravity SUV at the end of this year.
Lucid announced the investment less than three weeks after CEO Peter Rawlinson told Financial Times that he was wary of relying too heavily on Saudi Arabia to keep shoveling money into its proverbial furnace. “If I adopt a mindset that there is bottomless wealth from PIF, that is very dangerous, that is something I will never do, I respect them far too much for that,” Rawlinson said at the time.
Source: TechCrunch
