Seven-year-old electrical car startup Canoo has filed for chapter and can “cease operations immediately.” The firm is liquidating its belongings in a Chapter 7 continuing within the Delaware Bankruptcy Court.
The firm mentioned in a press launch printed late Friday that it was “in discussions with foreign sources of capital” that proved unsuccessful, and in addition singled out an incapability to safe funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office, which has been on a lending spree within the waning days of the Biden administration.
Canoo mentioned in its chapter submitting that it owes cash to fewer than 49 collectors, with excellent liabilities totaling between $10 million and $50 million. It claimed to have lower than $50,000 in belongings.
The chapter submitting comes just some weeks after Canoo furloughed the rest of its employees and idled its manufacturing unit in Oklahoma. The firm struggled all through 2024 to get various of its electrical vans into the fingers of potential prospects, and suffered quite a few govt departures. It had simply $700,000 within the financial institution in mid-November.
Canoo is the most recent EV startup to go bankrupt after merging with a particular function acquisition firm (SPAC) as a shortcut to going public. Electric Last Mile Solutions was the primary in June 2022. But since then, Fisker, Lordstown Motors, Proterra, Lion Electric, and Arrival all filed for various ranges of chapter safety of their varied residence nations. (Canoo purchased Arrival’s belongings out of insolvency in 2024, although it’s unclear if it ever put any of it to make use of.)
Canoo introduced plans to merge with SPAC Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp. in August 2020, and went public that following December, elevating round $600 million. In the years because it went public, the corporate made a small variety of its bubbly electrical vans and handed them over to companions — some paying — keen to trial the autos. The United States Postal Service, Department of Defense, and NASA all have or had Canoo autos.
At one level, the corporate even courted Walmart, which agreed to buy as many as 10,000 EVs from Canoo in 2022. But the deal was primarily non-binding and bore little danger for the retail big.
Canoo was based in late 2017 by a splinter group of executives that have been fed up with the drama surrounding the opposite EV startup the place they labored on the time, Faraday Future. Originally known as Evelozcity, these executives developed a modular electrical car platform that might energy cabins in a number of sizes and styles, and utilized superior expertise like a steer-by-wire system.
The concepts inside Canoo have been enticing sufficient that the startup at one level was in talks with Apple, which was concerned about a possible funding and even acquisition as a option to enhance the tech big’s personal secretive electrical automotive challenge. Former CTO and at one level CEO of Canoo, Ulrich Kranz, went on to assist run Apple’s automotive challenge earlier than it was disbanded in 2024.
But Canoo underwent quite a few pivots after it went public and gained a brand new chairman and CEO in Tony Aquila, who had invested within the firm previous to the merger.
A serial entrepreneur, Aquila instantly refocused Canoo away from promoting to customers and prioritized industrial fleets. On his watch, Canoo repeatedly modified plans on whether or not it could construct its personal electrical autos or outsource the work. At one level Canoo, introduced it was transferring its headquarters to Bentonville, Arkansas — the house of Walmart — however then by no means actually adopted by means of. Instead, the corporate spent years attempting to face up a number of manufacturing services in Oklahoma.
Aquila’s personal monetary agency appeared to learn from his put up atop the corporate. In 2023, Canoo spent double its meager income to Aquila’s agency to pay for using its company jet. Canoo additionally rented workplace area from Aquila’s agency, in response to regulatory filings.
It was additionally Aquila’s agency that stored Canoo…
