Seven-year-old electric vehicle startup Canoo has filed for bankruptcy and plans to “cease operations immediately.” The company is liquidating its assets in Chapter 7 proceedings in Delaware Bankruptcy Court.
In a press release late Friday, the company said it was “in discussions with foreign sources of capital” without success, and also cited an inability to secure funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Loan Programs. Loans surged during the waning days of the Biden administration.
Canu said in its bankruptcy filing (and its subsidiary’s filings) that it owes money to hundreds of creditors, totaling more than $164 million in debt. He claimed assets of approximately $126 million.
The bankruptcy filing comes just weeks after Canoe furloughed its remaining employees and idled its Oklahoma factory. Throughout 2024, the company struggled to get many electric vans into the hands of prospective customers and suffered a number of executive departures. As of mid-November, only $700,000 remained in the bank.
Canoo is the latest EV startup to go bankrupt after merging with a special acquisition purpose company (SPAC) as a shortcut to going public. Electric Last Mile Solutions became the first company in June 2022. But since then, Fisker, Lordstown Motors, Proterra, Lion Electric and Arrival have all filed for various levels of bankruptcy protection in their respective home countries. (Canoo bought Arrival’s assets out of bankruptcy in 2024, but it’s unclear whether they actually put those assets to use.)
Canoo announced plans to merge with SPAC Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp. in August 2020 and went public the following December, raising approximately $600 million. In the years since going public, the company has built a small number of lively electric vans and handed them over to partners (some of whom paid for them) who were willing to test drive the vehicles. The U.S. Postal Service, Department of Defense, and NASA all own or have owned Canoo vehicles.
At one point, the company even courted Walmart, which agreed to buy up to 10,000 EVs from Canoe in 2022. But the deal was essentially non-binding and posed little risk to the retail giant.
Canoo was founded in late 2017 by a splinter group of executives fed up with the drama surrounding Faraday Future, another EV startup where they worked at the time. Originally called Evelozcity, these executives developed a modular electric vehicle platform that could power cabins of various shapes and sizes, and utilized advanced technologies such as steer-by-wire systems.
The idea inside Canoo was appealing enough that the startup was in talks with Apple at one point. Apple was interested in a potential investment or acquisition as a way to further the tech giant’s own secret electric car project. Canoo’s former CTO and one-time CEO, Ulrich Krantz, continued to help run Apple’s car projects until it was disbanded in 2024.
However, Canoo changed course several times after going public, bringing in Tony Aquila, who had invested in the company before the merger, as its new chairman and CEO.
A serial entrepreneur, Aquila quickly moved Canoo away from consumer sales in favor of commercial fleets. Under his watch, Canu repeatedly changed its plans on whether to build its own electric cars or outsource the work. Canoe at one point announced that it would move its headquarters to Bentonville, Arkansas, the home of Walmart, but never actually moved. Instead, the company spent years setting up multiple manufacturing facilities in Oklahoma.
Mr. Aquila’s own financial company appeared to benefit from his position at the top of the company. In 2023, Canu paid twice that meager income to Aquila’s company for the use of its jets. Canu also rented office space from Aquila’s company, according to regulatory filings.
It was Aquila’s company that kept the canoe afloat these past few months. Back in October, the company loaned Canoe millions of dollars to keep the lights on. These loans were secured by a “first lien and security interest” in equipment located at Canoe’s Oklahoma City facility.
Signs of bankruptcy have been looming all week. Reddit users noticed that the company’s sign outside its office in Justin, Texas, had been removed. Several furloughed employees told TechCrunch they have received formal termination notices. Some people who deposited $100 when the company was still planning to sell to the general public have started receiving refunds.
This article has been updated with new information about Canoo’s total creditors, assets, and liabilities.