Can Walmart save EV company Canoo?

But Tony Aquila, who had started a gradual takeover of the company a couple of years ago, expressed confidence to me at the time, as I wrote about in my latest feature for Coins2Day. 

After all, a month later, Canoo would announce it had signed an agreement with Walmart to purchase up to 10,000 of its vehicles. As part of the deal, Walmart would get warrants for shares worth more than 20% of the company.

Canoo’s ties to Walmart’s home base of Bentonville have grown thick since Aquila became executive chairman, and later CEO, of the company. At the end of 2021, Canoo announced it was moving its headquarters to Bentonville. Earlier this year, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson named Aquila as one of more than a dozen members of the state’s newly minted Council on Future Mobility. And Canoo has been offered some $400 million in tax incentives from Arkansas and nearby Oklahoma to build two new facilities in those states, including a manufacturing operation and headquarters in Bentonville.

Even so, Canoo is struggling. Executives have been bleeding from the company since Aquila’s arrival. Canoo’s stock is hovering around $3.50—down from $8 earlier this year, and from $15 shortly after its SPAC merger at the end of 2020. Canoo is burning cash—with nearly $300 million lost in the first six months of this year, and it has yet to start construction on its own manufacturing facilities. Canoo’s regulatory filings are muddled with generous payment arrangements between the company, its CEO, and Aquila’s affiliated business entities. 

Even the Walmart deal, which promises to offer a significant sales pipeline to the company, has strings attached. Walmart can give Canoo 30 days’ written notice to cancel the deal, according to Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures, and Canoo’s vehicles are also subject to “certain acceptance and performance criteria” that the EV company will need to meet. Canoo is also barred under the new deal from working with—or selling shares to—one of Walmart’s largest competitors, Amazon.

Will Canoo’s sleek EV vehicles ever make it onto the road? You can read the full story here.

You’ve heard me say this… But good journalism takes a lot of time and resources. That’s why Coins2Day put up a paywall—so that we’re able to dig deep and take a few weeks (or months) to write about how private equity could be hurting care in the autism services industry, or how Daily Harvest has responded to its alleged food poisoning debacle. If you like the work we’re doing, please consider an annual subscription. (You can use the code MATHEWS22 for 50% off.)

See you tomorrow,

Jessica Mathews
Twitter: @jessicakmathews
Email: [email protected]
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Jackson Fordyce curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.

VENTURE DEALS

—Landing, a Birmingham, Ala.–based apartment rental platform, raised $75 million in Series C funding. Delta-v Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Greycroft and Foundry. 

—Tridge, a Seoul-based agricultural technology company, raised $37 million in Series D funding led by DS Asset Management. 

—Zumper, a San Francisco–based privately owned rental marketplace, raised $30 million in Series D extension funding led by Kleiner Perkins.

—Avenda Health, a Culver City, Calif.–based prostate cancer health care company, raised $10 million in Series B funding. VCapital led the round and was joined by investors including Plug & Play Ventures and Wealthing VC Club. 

—Carbon Counts, a Cambridge, Mass.–based climate change gaming platform, raised an additional $4.5 million in seed funding. Borderless Capital, Algorand, and the Algorand Foundation led the round and were joined by investors including the Grantham Environmental Trust, Susquehanna Foundation, Oceans Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, Capital Factory, and others. 

—Deliverider, a Tel Aviv–based logistics solution platform for e-grocery, raised $2 million in seed funding co-led by Millennium Group’s private equity fund and NC Capital. 

PRIVATE EQUITY

—The Aspen Group acquired AZPetVet, a Phoenix area–based animal hospitals operator. Financial terms were not disclosed.

—Tech24, backed by HCI Equity Partners, acquired AmeriCold, a New York-based cold-side repair and installation services provider, and Arrowhead Commercial Equipment, a Phoenix-based repair services, preventive maintenance, and installation provider for food service and refrigeration equipment. Financial terms were not disclosed.

OTHER

—Community Brands acquired BigSIS, a Longmont, Colo.–based school management and student information system platform. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

PEOPLE

—Flourish Ventures, a Redwood City, Calif.–based venture capital firm, hired Tyler Mann as head of global legal and John Onwualu as principal. Formerly, Mann was with Greenoaks Capital and Onwualu was with the U.S. International Development Finance Corp.And SoFi.