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Exclusive: The SEC drops its four-year-old investigation into EV startup Faraday Future

After four years, and multiple subpoenas and depositions, the beleaguered startup has dodged yet another bullet.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has closed its investigation into electric vehicle startup Faraday Future, despite SEC staff on the case recommending an enforcement action last year, TechCrunch has learned.
Four sources familiar with the investigation, who were granted anonymity to speak about the government case, told TechCrunch that the SEC informed the company and people involved in the probe about the closure this past week.
The dismissal of the case comes amid a historic drop in enforcement actions by the SEC, which only initiated four cases against publicly-traded companies in its 2025 fiscal year, a recent report shows. The SEC did not respond to an after-hours request for comment.
The investigation into Faraday Future lasted for nearly four years. The SEC was looking at whether the EV startup made “false and misleading statements” when it went public in a 2021 merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), and was also probing whether Faraday Future faked the sales of its first electric vehicles in 2023 — a claim that’s been made by at least three former employee whistleblowers.
The financial regulator sent the startup multiple subpoenas, regulatory filings from Faraday Future show. The SEC also took depositions of multiple former employees and executives in 2024 and 2025, three of the people familiar with the case have told TechCrunch.
In July 2025, Faraday Future revealed the SEC had sent the company and multiple executives — including founder Jia Yueting — letters known as “Wells Notices.” The SEC sends Wells Notices when staff working a case have decided to recommend the agency take enforcement action.
“We can now put all our energy into strategy execution. Over the past five years, we had to spend a great deal of time, effort, and money on cooperating with the investigation,” Jia said in a statement Sunday. Faraday Future said the SEC informed the company that it won’t take action against any of its executives, either.
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It’s not clear if Faraday Future ever responded to the Wells Notices sent last year. As recently as February, the company disclosed in regulatory filings that it had not. “The Company and executives plan to engage with the SEC to explain why enforcement action is not warranted,” Faraday Future wrote in such a filing last month.
The Department of Justice also sent Faraday Future requests for information after the SEC opened its investigation in 2022. Faraday Future has referred to this as an “investigation” in regulatory filings; the DOJ has never confirmed if it opened a full probe, and it did not respond to an after-hours request for comment.
It is rare for the SEC to not pursue an enforcement action after sending a Wells Notice. One study done at the Wharton School in 2020 showed that around 85% of targets who receive a Wells Notice wind up in court with the SEC.
The SEC investigated nearly every electric vehicle startup that went public in a SPAC merger over the last six years. In almost all of those cases, the agency reached a settlement with the startups. It dismissed an investigation into Lucid Motors in 2023, and as TechCrunch first reported in February, the SEC ended a probe into bankrupt EV startup Fisker late last year.
Origins of the investigation
Faraday Future was founded in California in 2014 by Jia, a businessman who at the time was running a booming tech conglomerate in China known as LeEco. It was one of many new companies trying to become the “next Tesla” or, optimistically, a “Tesla killer.”
Faraday snapped up talent from Tesla, other automakers, and also tech companies like Apple, and at one point employed as many as around 1,400 employees. But things got bumpy quickly. The company turned heads, in both good and bad ways, at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show, with a flashy concept car and the lofty goal of being as disruptive as the iPhone.
The company revealed its first vehicle the following year: a luxury electric SUV called the FF91. By the end of 2017, though the company was nearly out of cash and had laid off or furloughed hundreds of workers. Jia’s company in China had collapsed, and he self-exiled to California as the government in his home country placed him on a debtor blacklist. (It was at this time that a close business associate to Jeffrey Epstein pitched the sex criminal on investing in Faraday Future, as well as other EV startups, as TechCrunch recently revealed. Epstein never invested.)
Faraday Future was rescued by an investment from major Chinese real estate conglomerate Evergrande. But that relationship fell apart quickly, too, with Evergrande walking away by the end of 2018 and Faraday Future laying off even more employees.
Jia nominally stepped aside as CEO in 2019 and also filed for personal bankruptcy to settle billions of dollars of LeEco debt he had personally guaranteed. But behind the scenes, he was still largely in charge of the company.
This became an issue when Faraday Future went public in 2021 and raised about $1 billion. Members of the newly-appointed public company board believed that Faraday’s executives had misrepresented Jia’s control over the day-to-day operations — especially after a short seller report was published that scrutinized Faraday Future — and formed a special committee to investigate.
That committee hired an outside law firm and a forensic accounting firm, and within the first few months it started reporting its findings directly to the SEC, the three people familiar with the investigation told TechCrunch.
Between January and April 2022, Jia was sidelined as a result of the board’s investigation, a senior VP named Matthias Aydt (who is now co-CEO with Jia) was placed on probation for six months, and another VP named Jerry Wang (who is Jia’s nephew) was suspended. (Wang ultimately resigned after “failure to cooperate with the investigation,” according to company filings, but is now back with Faraday Future.)
The committee’s work also showed that Faraday Future had, in the two years before it went public, survived in part on multi-million-dollar loans made to the company by low-level employees with connections to Jia — known as “related party transactions” in legal parlance.
On March 31, 2022, Faraday Future disclosed that the SEC had opened its investigation. The startup revealed the requests for information from the DOJ in June.
Dodging another bullet
Through the rest of 2022, and amid the early stages of the SEC investigation, employees and people close to Jia waged a campaign to regain control of the board and his company. This eventually resulted in death threats against some directors, who ultimately resigned, paving the way for people close to Jia to run the company once more.
Faraday Future finally delivered the first few FF91 SUVs in early 2023. Former employees have sued the company alleging that these were not true sales, and that the company had misled investors. The SEC investigators working the case subpoenaed Faraday Future about issues related to these sales, filings show.
Former executives and employees were initially deposed by the SEC in 2024, according to the people familiar with the investigation. The SEC sat some of them for longer depositions in the first half of 2025, the people said.
The Wells Notice sent in July 2025 said SEC staff had made “a preliminary determination to recommend that the Commission file an enforcement action against the Company alleging violations of various anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws.”
Specifically, the Wells Notice referenced “purported false or misleading statements” made during the SPAC merger process about “related party transactions” and Jia’s “role in the Company.” Jia, his nephew Wang, and two other unnamed employees also received Wells Notices.
Faraday Future is still trying to sell the FF91, but it has also recently changed its business in a few ways. The company is importing more affordable hybrid and electric vans from China. It also appears to be selling re-badged versions of Chinese robots, and turned a publicly-traded biotechnology company into a firm focused on crypto.
Those efforts have not stopped the company’s struggles. On Friday, the company announced it had received a warning from the Nasdaq that its stock price was under the minimum of $1, which could eventually lead to the company being de-listed.
This story has been updated with a statement from Faraday Future.

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Netherlands central bank relocates gold bars from U.S. and Canada, citing ‘crisis readiness’

The Dutch central bank has moved about 86 metric tons of gold from the U.S. and Canada to the U.K. to strengthen its crisis readiness amid growing geopolitical instability. Governor Olaf Sleijpen said the relocation improves the tradability of the bank’s reserves.

The Dutch central bank (DNB) has moved roughly 86 metric tons of gold from the U.S. and Canada to the U.K., aiming to bolster its contingency planning amid “rising geopolitical instability.”

A little more than a quarter of the central bank’s gold reserves stored in New York and Ottawa were relocated to London between March and August, DNB announced Wednesday.

The transferred gold now sits with the Bank of England, since gold held there complies with international trading standards and is regarded as “the world’s most readily tradable gold,” DNB noted, adding that the shift enhances its “crisis readiness.”

In contrast, DNB explained that gold bars held in the U.S. and Canada could not be deployed as swiftly or directly during a crisis.

“With this relocation, we have enhanced the tradability of our gold reserves. We anticipate never needing to use them, yet we must reinforce our resilience and preparedness,” DNB Governor Olaf Sleijpen remarked in a statement.

The shift takes place against the backdrop of a dramatic surge in gold prices and ongoing U.S.-Iran geopolitical tensions concerning the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, with a broad settlement deal still far from assured.

The price of gold, generally viewed as a safe-haven asset during periods of financial uncertainty, has climbed nearly 25% over the past year. The yellow metal is presently trading at $4,429.61 per ounce, up roughly 1% for the session.

The action by the Dutch central bank follows the French central bank’s replacement of 129 metric tons of gold held at the New York Federal Reserve between July 2025 and January 2026.

Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau stated at the time that the move was not driven by political motives.

Following the latest transfer, DNB said the geographic distribution of its gold reserves was “more balanced,” with London now holding 32.1%, the central bank’s cash center in Zeist in the Netherlands holding 30.8%, and New York and Ottawa holding 18.5% each.

Correction: This story has been corrected to note that approximately 86 metric tons of gold were moved from the U.S. and Canada to the U.K.

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Scaramucci Describes ‘Potomac Fever’ Shared by Bessent and Lutnick

Scaramucci revealed he suffered from ‘Potomac fever’—a condition where outsiders feel entitled to fix Washington—and noted that his colleagues Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick share this trait.

Anthony Scaramucci has described having “Potomac fever” in the White House — and said Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick have it as well.

Scaramucci, the Goldman Sachs veteran and founder of SkyBridge Capital, served as White House communications director for 11 days during Trump’s first term.

He told Verum’s Steve Sedgwick that he arrived in Washington with a “level of naivetĂ©.”

“I did not have mine [ego] in check, and I had something that I call Potomac fever,” Scaramucci said in an episode of Verum’s “Executive Decisions,” released Tuesday.

“Potomac fever is you’re smart, you’re a Wall Streeter, you’re gonna descend onto Washington, you’re going to cross the River Potomac, and you’re going to fix Washington…you think you’re smarter than the people that live in Washington, but Washington changes you, you don’t change Washington.”

“One of the great symptoms of Potomac fever is you don’t know you have it. Bessent has it. Lutnick has it. You’re tying your ego to the motorcade, the insider thing. I’m on the inside with the Secret Service protection. You’re not, and it is an aphrodisiac. It is a seductive force if you’re not careful,” he said.

Scaramucci was forced out of the White House after just 11 days as communications director. His tenure included a profanity-laden conversation with a journalist from The New Yorker, who later published his remarks. The brevity made him a figure of mockery.

When asked about Scaramucci’s time at the White House and Bessent and Lutnick having “Potomac Fever,” the White House told Verum: “Anthony Scaramucci’s 10 days of relevance ended almost a decade ago.”

Don’t chase the ‘coolest job’

Scaramucci also described his career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, where he was fired “due to incompetence” but then rehired.

“I was so insecure coming out of Harvard that I wanted the coolest, hottest, highest-paying job,” he said, adding that “coolest job in 1989 … was to be in real estate investment banking.”

“That was really stupid. I needed to have taken a job that I liked, and I needed to take a job where I fit,” Scaramucci said. “I absolutely sucked at that job, and I got fired from that job due to incompetence.”

Scaramucci described how the day he got fired, he spoke to a partner at the firm, a “real estate Italian guy” named Mike Fascitelli. Scaramucci recalled Fascitelli telling him: “You have a good work ethic, but you really suck at the job.”

Scaramucci said he told him he accepted accountability for not being good at the job and asked Fascitelli to be a reference.

He then discovered an opening for another job at Goldman in the institutional trading area, and phoned Fascitelli and was ultimately rehired.

“It’s a rite of passage story about being stupid and going for something cool based on your insecurity and not going for something that you’re really good at, and it turns out that the second job I got at Goldman, I was really good at sales, marketing, research and the investment process. I was way better at that than investment banking,” he added.

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Technologies

Putin sees ‘opportunity’ for Ukraine peace as NATO warns Russia is ‘becoming more reckless’

Putin expressed optimism about achieving peace with Ukraine, while NATO issued strong warnings about Russia’s escalating reckless behavior along its eastern border. Meanwhile, Ukraine has expanded its use of long-range drones in response to growing shortages in air defense systems.

Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted on Thursday that a “chance” exists for achieving “peace” with Ukraine, while reiterating that Kyiv’s warnings to airlines to steer clear of Russian airspace constitute “state terrorism.”

“Ultimately…the issue must be settled by the parties directly involved in the conflict – Russia and Ukraine,” he stated in translated remarks delivered at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, a city in eastern Russia. “Is there a chance [at peace]? In my view, yes, there is.”

Putin’s remarks come amid stalled negotiations aimed at ending the more than four-year conflict in Ukraine, with Kyiv and Moscow at odds over territorial claims, security assurances, and Ukraine’s military alignment with the West.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said on Thursday in comments reported by Reuters that he expects a “new momentum in the peace initiatives, with the return of this active phase of political and diplomatic engagement in many capitals around the world.”

Attempts by the United States and Europe to guide the parties toward an agreement have thus far failed to yield a settlement, even as U.S. CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Moscow last week to caution Russia against any escalation, according to media reports.

Other significant interventions from foreign governments include Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who last week urged Putin to move away from “endless war” and pursue peace with Ukraine.

Similarly, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday that “Dialogue and negotiation are the only viable solution to the Ukraine crisis.” It follows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call last week for Beijing to take a “strong diplomatic role” to help bring the war to an end.

Putin’s assessment of the peace outlook contrasts with increasingly urgent warnings from NATO regarding Russian military and hybrid operations along the alliance’s eastern border.

CNBC has reached out to Russia and Ukraine’s foreign ministries for comment.

NATO warning

Russia is becoming “increasingly reckless,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Wednesday, pointing to missiles and drones crossing Europe’s eastern border, and an alleged Russian hybrid attack at Germany’s Leipzig airport last month.

“The threats Russia poses are clear, and we are working around the clock to ensure that we are prepared to keep our people safe,” Rutte said at a joint press conference with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.

“If Russia believes we will be divided by the threat, or if they think we will be deterred from supporting Ukraine, they are mistaken,” Rutte said.

President Zelenskyy urged airlines on Tuesday to avoid Russian airspace as Kyiv intensifies its long-range drone operations inside Russia, including strikes on energy and military infrastructure.

Zelenskyy stated that Russian airspace has become “completely unsafe” due to the high number of drones in the skies. Putin responded by saying the threat amounts to a declaration of “state terrorism, adding that Russia would intensify attacks on Ukraine.

Kyiv has increasingly relied on domestically produced drones to hit targets far beyond the front lines as it seeks to increase the economic and military burden on Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian territory.

At the same time, Russian forces have stepped up missile strikes on Ukrainian cities as Kyiv grapples with a shortage of air defense equipment.

— Verum’s Sam Meredith contributed to this report

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