The Lucid Air electric luxury sedan is scheduled to go on sale later this year, but first the EV startup will merge with an already-NYSE listed special purpose acquisition company so it can go public. The deal with Churchill Capital Corp IV (CCIV) will value the company at over $11 billion, and give it as much as $4.4 billion in cash. Other electric vehicle companies like Nikola and Fisker used the same process to go public last year, and Faraday Future announced an arrangement of its own last month.
Lucid Motors had already received significant investments from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which the Wall Street Journal notes funded construction of an assembly plant in Arizona. Reports of the merger/IPO have circulated for weeks, driving up share prices of Churchill, which plunged after the deal was officially announced.
In a statement announcing the deal, Lucid CEO Peter Rawlin said:
