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Image Credits:Kirsten Korosec10:33 AM PDT · July 28, 2026
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud, a subordinate of the Saudi royal family, has purchased a 5% involvement successful Lucid Motors, expanding the Kingdom’s wide ownership of the electrical conveyance company.
A caller filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published Tuesday shows that the billionaire prince precocious purchased a small much than 19 cardinal shares. In a post connected X, helium wrote that his concern bureau made the acquisition erstwhile Lucid’s marketplace headdress was beneath $2 billion.
That happened connected July 14, erstwhile an electrical conveyance blog published a report claiming that Lucid was considering either filing for bankruptcy extortion oregon being taken backstage by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealthiness fund. Lucid strenuously denied the reports, and the company’s banal terms has since rebounded.
“We don’t remark connected idiosyncratic investments, but we are aware and admit the autarkic ballot of confidence,” Lucid Motors’ Chief Communications Officer Nick Twork said successful a connection to TechCrunch.
The stock acquisition comes successful the mediate of a large restructuring effort kicked disconnected by Lucid’s newly-appointed CEO, Silvio Napoli, who chopped 18% of the workforce successful June successful an effort to “simplify the company.” That followed a similarly ample layoff earlier this twelvemonth earlier Napoli took over.
Lucid Motors has been majority-owned by the wealthiness money — known arsenic the Public Investment Fund, oregon PIF — since its archetypal concern successful 2018. That concern came aft Saudi Arabia considered, but yet abandoned, plans to instrumentality Tesla private. The PIF has owned astir 60% of Lucid Motors since the EV shaper merged with a peculiar intent acquisition institution successful 2021, a transaction that brought it to nationalist markets and raised $4 billion.
The Saudis person remained a large root of fiscal enactment for Lucid Motors since it went public, buying up shares and lending billions of dollars arsenic the institution has struggled to scope a wide marketplace of EV buyers successful the U.S. and abroad.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has a past with investing successful U.S. tech. Through his holding company, helium was a large shareholder of Twitter erstwhile it was inactive public. In 2022, helium initially balked astatine Elon Musk’s attempt to bargain the societal media company. But helium rapidly reversed people and cozied up to Musk, and became the second-largest shareholder of Twitter aft Musk took it private. (It’s unclear whether helium has retained that involvement done the company’s improvement into X and its consequent merger with xAI, and present into SpaceX.)
He besides owns stakes successful Snap and Deezer and is often referred to arsenic the “Arabian Warren Buffet,” according to his website.
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Sean O’Kane is simply a newsman who has spent a decennary covering the rapidly-evolving concern and exertion of the proscription industry, including Tesla and the galore startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, helium was a newsman astatine Bloomberg News wherever helium helped interruption stories astir immoderate of the astir notorious EV SPAC flops. He antecedently worked astatine The Verge, wherever helium besides covered user technology, hosted galore short- and long-form videos, performed merchandise and editorial photography, and erstwhile astir passed retired successful a Red Bull Air Race plane.
You tin interaction oregon verify outreach from Sean by emailing sean.okane@techcrunch.com oregon via encrypted connection astatine okane.01 connected Signal.
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