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EV startup Faraday Future paid $7.5M to company tied to founder Jia Yueting

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Why This Matters

The revelation that EV startup Faraday Future paid $7.5 million to a company controlled by founder Jia Yueting highlights ongoing concerns about transparency and governance in the EV industry. Despite regulatory investigations and financial struggles, such related-party transactions raise questions about accountability and the influence of founders on company operations, impacting investor confidence and industry credibility.

Key Takeaways

Faraday Future paid around $7.5 million to a company controlled by its founder Jia Yueting in 2025, according to a new regulatory filing.

The long-struggling electric vehicle startup made the payments in a year when it delivered only four vehicles and lost nearly $400 million. The company has pivoted to selling cheaper vans and robots imported from China.

The payments happened while Faraday Future was still under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which was probing what are known as “related party transactions” between the company and entities related to or controlled by Jia, Faraday’s own filings have shown. The SEC was also investigating whether Faraday Future properly represented the level of control Jia had over the company when it went public in 2021, and whether it lied about early sales of its EVs in 2023.

The SEC dropped its four-year investigation in March, as TechCrunch first reported, despite having sent notices to Faraday Future, Jia, and other executives last year stating that investigators were recommending an enforcement action. The closure of the investigation comes amid a historic drop in white-collar crime enforcement during the second Trump administration.

The new transactions were revealed in Faraday Future’s annual proxy filing published on Thursday. It shows Faraday Future paid a mix of monthly $100,000 “consulting” fees, a $2 million “bonus payment,” and $1.7 million to repay loans from the company, which is called FF Global Partners LLC. The company did not explain the remaining $2.6 million in the filing.

Faraday Future did not respond to a request for comment.

Faraday Future describes FF Global as an “affiliate” of Jia in the proxy filing, and in previous filings has said he exerts “significant influence” over the LLC. FF Global has five “voting managers,” one of whom is Jia, while the others include business associates and a family member — his nephew Jerry Wang.

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