Is Jia Yueting hooking up with a wealthy wealthy person? On Monday (December 4), local time, Faraday Future announced on its official website that it plans to establish a regional headquarters, production base and advanced R&D center in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, to bring its "generative AI technology and Extremely Intelligent Technology's top luxury AI electric cars to the local smart driving vehicle industry cluster (SAVI)."
Not only that, two weeks ago, Faraday Future held the company's Middle East strategy conference in Abu Dhabi. At the meeting, it signed strategic cooperation agreements with Master Investment Group and Siraj Finance LLC to officially enter the Middle East market.
Of course, there are also essential routine links: Faraday Future’s FF91 vehicle, specially customized for the Middle East market, is scheduled to be delivered in 2024.
Year after year, Jia Yueting, who has been building cars for 9 years, has delivered a total of 7 FF91s so far.
Faraday Future becomes profitable?
Faraday Future, which has only delivered 7 vehicles, is undoubtedly on the verge of shock in the eyes of the public. However, unexpectedly, Faraday Future is doing pretty well at the moment.
In the 2023 Q3 quarterly financial report just announced by Faraday Future, there were major breakthroughs in the financial highlights and financing parts.
Among them, Faraday Future sold the only factory that can currently build cars, the Hanford factory in California, USA, and received US$12 million (approximately 86.8692 million yuan) in non-dilutive equity capital.
Sold his only car manufacturing base, which undoubtedly made people want to run away with a bucket. In order to ease the panic of shareholders, Faraday Future vowed to state in the company announcement: We have not sold any physical assets including equipment. We have been renting the Hanford factory before, and now we have just changed landlords. The factory continues to operate normally.
As for this self-contradiction, how many people can be fooled?
In addition to selling the factory, Faraday Future has raised "new money" for the first time in a long time. According to the 2023 Q3 quarterly financial report, Faraday Future raised US$61.8 million (approximately 447 million) through convertible notes, equity credit lines and ATM financing.
In addition to the successfully delivered 7 FF91s, it also received US$551,000 (approximately 3.9919 million yuan) in vehicle sales fees.
With money on hand and no panic, Jia Yueting has reworked Faraday Future's mass production plan: the delivery of Faraday Future's first product is divided into three phases. In the first phase, the first batch of users will pay the vehicle fee in full in order to reserve and receive training on vehicle use; in the second phase, the first batch of owners will obtain the vehicle. It will not be until the third stage that full delivery after ramping up production capacity will be achieved.
Currently, the company is still in the second stage, which is the production capacity ramping period. It plans to produce 1,000 vehicles in 2024 and become a cash flow break-even company in 2025.
Although it finally saw "money back", Faraday Future's financial performance is not good, especially it has always been in a state of loss. In the Q3 quarter of 2023, its net loss reached US$78.046 million (approximately 565 million yuan), a year-on-year narrowing of 34.89% and a month-on-month narrowing of 37.53%.
Seven cars were sold, resulting in a net loss of US$78.046 million, which translates to a discount of more than US$10 million for every car sold by Jia Yueting.
Although Jia Yueting relied on his "accounting skills" to keep the bottom of the market and skillfully obtained a "life-saving money" from capital operations, Faraday Future's stock price still collapsed.
Since mid-November, Faraday Future's share price has fallen by more than 20% to US$0.52 per share, and then plummeted to only US$0.35 per share today. The stock price has repeatedly hit record lows, and the market value has also declined. The current total market value is only 20.46 million.
AI is the next “fooling mouth”
Boss Jia’s car-making journey has always been one route: get money, survive, and mass-produce and deliver.
Although "mass production and delivery" are far away, "getting money" and "surviving" are long-term tasks. But for Jia Yueting's "notoriety", it is difficult to find an excuse for deception, so this time he focused on the large AI model.
2023 is destined to be the year of AI. Hundreds of generative AIs at home and abroad are dancing like crazy. Everyone is hoping to make some money on AI. Even companies in unrelated fields want to involve some artificial intelligence in their company's business scope, and Jia Yueting is no exception.
Just last month, Faraday Future officially announced the launch of the "revolutionary product" FFaiPalBeta. According to Faraday Future, this is a Generative AI product in the travel field that uses the advanced technology of large language models (LLM) to provide a refreshing personalized artificial intelligence experience.
The intelligence of FFaiPalBeta is that it can display life services on the sidebar of the large central control screen of the car, recommend nearby Michelin restaurants based on real-time geographical location, display real-time stock information, scroll real-time news for browsing, schedule reminders, etc.
Faraday Future announced that it also plans to cooperate with third-party developers to provide a wide range of AI services in the future to meet different usage scenarios. According to Jim Gao, Global Vice President of FF Intelligent Network Application Platform, this test version will first be provided to "Co-creation Officers", and users can apply for a test experience through "FFLabs" on the official website.
All in all, it’s almost like a pop-up message on a mobile phone. Faraday Future has worked hard to compile one. Although we have not mass-produced and delivered it, we have made a very profitable car software!
AI plays a large role in Faraday's future plans. For example, this time Faraday plans to establish a regional headquarters, production base and advanced R&D center in Abu Dhabi. The name is also to create "generative AI technology and extremely intelligent technology to create the most luxurious AI train."
The two institutions that signed contracts with Faraday Future are Master Investment Group (MIG) and Siraj Finance LLC, both of which have royal backgrounds in the United Arab Emirates. But Jia Yueting is too "notorious", and the Middle Eastern tycoons are not fools.
However, according to the agreement, the two companies only provided support for Faraday Future's business operations in the Middle East, including business development, sales and marketing, strategic financing and partnerships, etc. Neither company mentioned any investment behavior, which means that neither company invested money in Jia Yueting.
It seems that the money from the donor’s father is not easy to cheat!
New energy takes root in the Middle East
Although it has one of the world's largest fossil energy reserves of oil and natural gas, the Middle East has always been one of the most enthusiastic regions for new energy vehicle companies. The reason is that they are too afraid of the depletion of oil resources and will have nothing.
Saudi Arabia launched the "2030 Vision" in 2016, aiming to increase the proportion of renewable energy power generation to 50% in 2030; the UAE released the "2050 Energy Strategy" in 2017, planning to invest one trillion yuan (600 billion dirhams), with the goal that by 2050, the UAE's energy structure will be 44% renewable energy, 38% natural gas, 12% clean fossil energy, and 6% nuclear energy.
Against this background, a large number of Middle Eastern countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Jordan are using various preferential subsidies and policies to attract Chinese new energy vehicle companies to build factories and invest in production bases there.
With the support of capital from the Middle East, a large number of new car-making forces have begun to regard the Middle East as their first stop overseas.
Abu Dhabi CYVNH Holdings has made a total strategic investment of approximately US$1.1 billion in Weilai through the private issuance of new shares and the transfer of old shares;
The Ministry of Investment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also signed a cooperation agreement with Human Horizons, the parent company of Gaohe Automobile. Saudi Arabia will invest a total of US$5.6 billion (approximately 40.1 billion yuan). The two parties plan to establish a joint venture to engage in automobile research and development, manufacturing and sales;
Saudi Arabia has jointly established the first local car brand CEER with Foxconn. BMW has authorized technical cooperation and Foxconn OEM. It also plans to cooperate with Hyundai Motor to build a factory with an annual output of 50,000 cars;
Great Wall Huaguan, the parent company of Qiantu Motor, signed a cooperation agreement with Manaseer Group, Jordan's largest private company, to establish a joint venture to serve the Middle East and North Africa market.
Seeing the collective "spending money" strategy of the oil tycoons, Jia Yueting, who is short of money and urgent, is naturally jealous. He said with envy: "There are many sovereign funds in the Middle East that attach great importance to the AI electric travel industry."
It's just that the oil tycoons are not stupid. The brands they cooperate with can basically achieve mass production. Jia Yueting, who builds PPT cars, doesn't seem to be too cold.
It seems that if he wants to deceive investors of their money, Jia Yueting must first fulfill his "lofty ambition" to complete mass production in 2024.