Fisker cuts hundreds of employees in an effort to keep EV startup afloat

Struggling electric vehicle startup Fisker Inc. has laid off hundreds of employees in a bid to stay afloat as it prepares for capital raises, acquisitions or bankruptcy.
Employees suspected layoffs were on the way when the company told everyone to work from home on Wednesday, a move that went against company policy, according to multiple current and former employees. The layoffs were announced during an all-hands meeting on Wednesday morning.
Founder and CEO Henrik Fisker told employees that a big investor the company is borrowing from, and a chief restructuring officer working for them, wanted more job cuts, according to employees who attended. Fisker didn’t say who was behind the convertible-note investment in question, but two employees said Henrik Fisker mentioned Heights Capital Management, an affiliate of financial-services giant Susquehanna International Group, when discussing job cuts at Wednesday’s meeting.
Current employees and one of the laid-off employees estimate that only about 150 people remain at the company.
Fisker has already made several rounds of job cuts. The company announced a 15% workforce reduction in February. Fisker had 1,135 employees as of April 19, according to regulatory filings. Those cuts followed another round of cuts in late April and another, unknown number, in late May before Wednesday’s cuts.
Fisker did not immediately respond to a request for comment. John DiDonato, Fisker’s restructuring director, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. According to documents obtained by TechCrunch, DiDonato told the California Employment Development Department on April 29 that the company planned to lay off more than 300 employees on June 28 if the company was “unable to meet its operating capital needs.”
Despite the widespread job cuts, Henrik Fisker struck a solemn but determined tone during the conference call, according to people familiar with the matter. At one point, he said the company was building “something great” and would keep selling its only electric vehicle, the Ocean SUV, to anyone who wanted it.
He also suggested the company would rehire laid-off workers once it reopens, according to one of the people who attended the meeting.
Many employees found out they had been fired after they lost access to Microsoft services like Teams and Outlook. Later that day, some employees received emails officially informing them they had been fired with one week’s severance pay. The fired employees repeated similar details in LinkedIn posts.
These new job cuts come after months of problems at Fisker and less than a year after the company began full-scale deliveries of its Ocean SUV.
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