Seven-year-old electric vehicle startup Canoo has filed for bankruptcy will ‘CEASE OPERATIONS IMMEDIATELY’ The company is liquidating its assets in Chapter 7 proceedings in Delaware Bankruptcy Court.
The company said in a press release She posted late Friday that “discussions with foreign capital sources” had proven unsuccessful, and also highlighted the inability to secure financing from the US Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office, which had been on a lending spree in the final days of 2018. Biden administration.
Cano said in its bankruptcy Deposit It owes money to fewer than 49 creditors, with outstanding liabilities totaling between $10 million and $50 million. She claimed to have assets of less than $50,000.
The bankruptcy filing comes just a few weeks after Canoo furloughed the rest of its workers and idled its Oklahoma plant. The company struggled throughout 2024 to get a few of its electric trucks into the hands of potential customers, and suffered several executive departures. He only had $700,000 in the bank in mid-November.
Canoo is the latest electric vehicle startup to go bankrupt after merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), short for going public. Electric Last Mile Solutions was the first in June 2022. But since then, Fisker, Lordstown Motors, Proterra, Electric lionThey all filed for different levels of bankruptcy protection in their different home countries. (Canoo bought Arrival’s assets after its bankruptcy in 2024, although it’s unclear whether it ever used any of them.)
Canoo announced plans to merge with SPAC Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp. in August 2020, and went public after December, raising about $600 million. In the years since it went public, the company has built a small number of its electric trucks and delivered them to partners — some of whom pay — willing to try out the vehicles. The United States Postal Service, Department of Defense, and NASA all own or own Canoo vehicles.
At one point, the company courted Walmart, which agreed to buy up to 10,000 electric cars from Canoo. In 2022. But the deal was essentially non-binding and carried little risk for the retail giant.
Canoo was founded in late 2017 by A A splinter group of executives Who were tired of the drama surrounding the other EV company they were working at at the time, Faraday Future. Originally called Evelozcity, these executives developed an electric vehicle platform that could power cabins of multiple shapes and sizes, and used advanced technology like a steer-by-wire system.
The ideas within Canoo were attractive enough that it was a startup at some point In talks with Applewhich was interested in a potential investment or even an acquisition as a way to boost the tech giant’s secretive electric car project. Ulrich Kranz, Canoo’s former CTO and sometime CEO, continued to help run Apple’s car project before it disbanded in 2024.
But Canoo underwent several transformations after going public and got a new chairman and CEO in Tony Aquila, who had invested in the company before the merger.
Aquila, a serial entrepreneur, immediately refocused Canoo away from selling to consumers and prioritizing commercial fleets. Under his watch, Kanoo repeatedly changed its plans on whether to make its own electric cars or outsource the work. At one point, Canoo announced it would move its headquarters to Bentonville, Arkansas — home of Walmart — but it never did. Instead, the company spent years trying to establish multiple manufacturing facilities in Oklahoma.
Aquila’s private financial firm appears to be benefiting from his position at the helm of the company. In 2023, Canoo spent double its meager Aquila revenue to pay for use of the company’s jet. Canoo also leased office space from Aquila, according to regulatory filings.
It was also Aquila that kept Kano alive in recent months. Company Loaned Canoo a few million dollars to keep the lights on dating back to October. These loans were secured by a “first priority lien and security interest” on equipment located at Canoo’s Oklahoma City facility.
Signs of bankruptcy were appearing all week. Reddit users noticed the company’s billboard outside its office in Justine, Texas It has been taken down. Several employees who were on leave told TechCrunch that they received formal termination notices. Some people who had placed $100 deposits when the company was still planning to sell to regular customers began getting refunds.