Saudi prince buys 5% stake in Lucid Motors amid restructuring

Prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family, has purchased a 5% stake in Lucid Motors, increasing the Kingdom’s overall ownership of the electric-vehicle maker. A new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published Tuesday shows the billionaire prince recently bought a little more than 19 million shares. In a post on X, he said his investment office made the purchase when Lucid’s market cap was below $2 billion.

That valuation followed a July 14 report from an electric-vehicle blog claiming Lucid was considering either filing for bankruptcy protection or being taken private by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Lucid strenuously denied the reports, and its stock price has since rebounded. “We don’t comment on individual investments, but we are aware and appreciate the independent vote of confidence,” Lucid’s chief communications officer, Nick Twork, told TechCrunch.

The purchase lands in the middle of a major restructuring under Lucid’s newly appointed CEO, Silvio Napoli, who cut 18% of the workforce in June to simplify the company — following a similarly large layoff earlier this year before he took over.

Lucid has been majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund since its initial 2018 investment, made after the Kingdom considered and then abandoned plans to take Tesla private. The PIF has held roughly 60% of Lucid since the EV maker went public via a SPAC merger in 2021, a deal that raised $4 billion. The Saudis have remained a major financial backer since, buying shares and lending billions of dollars as Lucid has struggled to reach a mass market of EV buyers in the U.S. and abroad.

Prince Al Waleed bin Talal has a history of investing in U.S. tech. Through his holding company, he was a major shareholder of Twitter while it was public, initially balking at Elon Musk’s 2022 takeover bid before reversing course and becoming the platform’s second-largest shareholder once Musk took it private. It’s unclear whether he retained that stake through the company’s evolution into X, its merger with xAI, and now with SpaceX. He also owns stakes in Snap and Deezer, and is often called the “Arabian Warren Buffett,” according to his website.

Why it matters

The purchase underscores how deep Saudi financial backing for Lucid runs, arriving just as the company works through a major restructuring and recovers from renewed market doubt about its future.