Faraday Future founder named co-CEO three years after being sidelined by internal probe

Troubled electric vehicle startup Faraday Future’s board of directors has appointed founder Jia Yueting as the company’s co-CEO, three years after he was sidelined following an internal probe into allegations of fraud — a probe that led to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission that remains ongoing.

Jia will serve alongside current CEO Matthias Aydt and will oversee Faraday’s finance, legal, and supply chain teams, the company announced in a press conference Thursday. Aydt is a longtime Faraday Future employee who was once placed on probation after he offered to pay a Faraday Future board member up to $700,000 to resign in the middle of a months-long power struggle over the company.

Jia’s appointment comes just one month after Faraday Future named Jia’s nephew Jerry Wang as president of the EV startup. Wang resigned in 2022 as a result of the internal probe because of a “failure to cooperate with the investigation,” according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Faraday Future was founded by Jia in 2014 as he looked to build on what was at the time a successful electronics and media streaming empire in China.

That empire collapsed, and Jia self-exiled to the U.S. to focus on Faraday Future. The company has spent the last decade and over $3 billion to develop an ultra-luxury EV called the FF91. But it has only sold around a dozen of them to date, and has been accused in lawsuits of misrepresenting some of those sales.