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Seven - year - old electric vehicle startup Canoo has filed for bankruptcy andwill“cease operation forthwith . ” The company is liquidating its asset in a Chapter 7 proceedings in the Delaware Bankruptcy Court .
The company said in apress releasepublished late Friday that it was “ in treatment with alien sources of capital ” that essay unsuccessful and also singled out an inability to secure financing from the U.S. Department of Energy ’s Loan Program Office , which has been on a loaning fling in the wan Clarence Day of the Biden brass .
Canoo suppose in its bankruptcyfiling(and the filing for its subsidiaries ) that it owes money to hundred of creditor and that it has more than $ 164 million in total liability . It claimed around $ 126 million in assets .
The bankruptcy filing comes just a few weeks after Canoofurloughed the residual of its workersand idled its factory in Oklahoma . The fellowship struggled throughout 2024 to get more than a few of its electric vans into the hands of prospective customer and sufferednumerous executive director departures . Ithadjust $ 700,000 in the cant in mid - November .
Canoo is the latest EV startup to go bankrupt after merging with a special purpose acquisition fellowship ( SPAC ) as a shortcut to hold out public . Electric Last Mile Solutions was the first inJune 2022 . But since then , Fisker , Lordstown Motors , Proterra , Lion Electric , andArrivalall file away for different levels of bankruptcy aegis in their various home base nation . ( Canoo bought Arrival ’s asset out of insolvency in 2024 , though it ’s unreadable if it ever put any of it to use . )
Canooannouncedplans to merge with SPAC Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp. in August 2020 and went public that keep up December , arouse around $ 600 million . In the years since it went public , the company made a diminished figure of its bubbly galvanic vans and handed them over to partners — some paying — unforced to trial the vehicles . The U.S. Postal Service , Department of Defense , and NASA all have or had Canoo vehicles .
At one gunpoint , the company even courted Walmart , which fit to buy as many as 10,000 EVs from Canooin 2022 . But the deal was essentially nonbinding and bore slight risk for the retail giant .
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Canoo was founded in belated 2017 by asplinter group of executiveswho were fed up with the drama surround the other EV inauguration where they shape at the sentence , Faraday Future . Originally call Evelozcity , those executives developed a modular electrical fomite platform that could power cabins in multiple shapes and sizes , and utilized advanced engineering like a head - by - telegram arrangement .
The idea inside Canoo were attractive enough that the startup at one point wasin lecture with Apple , which was interested in a possible investiture or even acquisition as a means to advance the technical school giant ’s own closelipped electric motorcar undertaking . Former CTO and at one point CEO of Canoo , Ulrich Kranz , conk on to help endure Apple ’s car labor before it wasdisbandedin 2024 .
But Canoo underwent legion pivot man after it went public and gain ground a novel chairman and CEO in Tony Aquila , who had invested in the company prior to the merger .
A successive entrepreneur , Aquila instantly refocus Canoo off from selling to consumers and prioritized commercial fleet . On his vigil , Canoo repeatedly convert plans on whether it would build up its own electrical fomite or outsource the work . At one compass point , Canoo announced it was move its military headquarters to Bentonville , Arkansas — the home of Walmart — but then never really follow through . Instead , the caller spent years seek to stand up multiple fabrication facilities in Oklahoma .
Aquila ’s own fiscal firm seem to gain from his berth atop the company . In 2023 , Canoo spent double its meagerly gross topay for the use of goods and services of its incorporated jet . Canoo also rented office staff place from Aquila ’s firm , grant to regulatory filing .
It was also Aquila ’s business firm that kept Canoo animated in late months . The firmloanedCanoo a few million dollar to keep the lights on see back to October . Those loans were secured by a “ first priority lien and security interest ” on the equipment settle at Canoo ’s Oklahoma City readiness .
Signs of a failure were bubbling up all week . Reddit user noticed that the company ’s billboard outside its office in Justin , Texas , had been taken down . Multiple employee who were on furlough told TechCrunch that they received prescribed termination notices . Some people who had placed $ 100 sediment when the companionship was still planning on selling to even customer had started to get refund .
This write up has been updated with novel information about Canoo ’s total creditors , asset , and liabilities .
