Despite closing a $300M investment from ride-hailing group Uber Technologies (NYSE:UBER) this week, Marc Winterhoff, interim CEO of the U.S. EV maker Lucid Group (NASDAQ:LCID), has told The Financial Times that his company will have to raise more equity next year.
The investment announced on Thursday as part of a global robotaxi program launched in July made Uber (NYSE:UBER) the second-largest shareholder of Lucid (NASDAQ:LCID) after the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
“The largest ride-hailing business in the world does a strategic deal and invests,” noted Winterhoff about the transaction, which requires Uber (NYSE:UBER) to deploy at least 20,000 Lucid vehicles over six years. “It tells you something . . . 20,000 is a starting point. The sky’s the limit,” he added.
“The money that we have right now will take us until the second half of 2026; we’ll have to raise additional funds before we get profitable or break even on our own,” Winterhoff added during an interview at the company’s headquarters in Newark, California.
Lucid (NASDAQ:LCID) shares have lost ~21% this year, indicating the company’s less-than-favorable outlook following the U.S. government’s decision to eliminate a $7,500 EV tax incentive and void emissions trading programs in July as part of the Trump administration’s sprawling budget bill.
“This year in general hasn’t been easy . . . [there was a] string of sector news that brought the stock further down” in the late summer, Winterhoff noted. With specifying the exact amount of the regulatory benefit, Winterhoff said it is “a big number of pure profit that we now have to live without.” “But again, it was never really our path to profitability to rely on that,” he added.