Apple previously wanted to purchase Canoo early last year. Canoo turned down an acquisition offer and wanted an investment instead. After talks fell apart, Canoo went public via SPAC as $GOEV in December. A few months ago, Ulrich Kranz (CEO and Co-Founder of Canoo) left the company. He said many times that he’s not a job hopper and is proud of that. In fact, he’s worked at BMW for 30 years prior to co-founding Canoo, where he led BMW’s i-division to create the BMW i3 and BMW i8. He also brought many of his BMW team to Canoo. Today, Bloomberg announced that Apple recruited Ulrich Kranz to report under Doug Field. Kranz still owns a percentage of Canoo. Canoo is his baby, and he built the company as he wanted, ground up. Kranz believes he and his team engineered the best skateboard on the market. Yet, Kranz cannot use any of his work at his new role with Apple due to IP infringement. In fact, Tony Aquila (Canoo’s Executive Chairman and now CEO) heavily guards their IP and has made it a point in saying that on the last earnings call. Apple will have to acquire Canoo or have some licensing deal in place to use any of Canoo’s technology. As the new dropped, there was a huge spike in the share price and the entire order book was cleared ($5m+ worth), in a single minute, with another $2m the very next minute. This along with the unusual 20%+ jump on Tuesday when news may have originally leaked. There were 26m+ shares traded that day, whereas the 90-day average volume is 5m (or 5x average). Would love to hear Blinders thoughts on this. #apple #canoo #rivianautomotive #lucid #fisker #tesla #lordstown #magna #google #waymo #amazon #microsoft #ford #gm #toyota #honda #quantumscape #microvast
I feel like Goldman Sachs is tagging all these other companies to stir up the pot lol. As a Ford employee, I am very curious what Apple is up to with this “Apple car” i keep seeing in Mac forums and news sites. Apple designs and produces (albeit not assembled with American workers which makes me slightly salty) the worlds most premier devices, so if they are looking at the car as their next “premier device”, I would like to see what that kinda shin dig is about. If anyone has any job openings for this mysterious Apple car feel free to leave them in this thread. I may toss my hat in if my skill sets match what is needed.
you guys are winning a major battle with the lightning. but the wars just begun.
Not to stir up the pot, but raise awareness for those who are interested. For what it’s worth, I strongly believe the F-150 Lightning will be a smashing success. Neither Apple nor Canoo competes in this segment.
You might need more tags to attract interest to your topic.
While I think a bit of speculation can be healthy, I would be very careful with being this bullish. The takeover by Tony was not all sunshine and rainbows and to me, it felt like there were some bridges burned. For one, Tony was very quick to publicly criticize the prior executive team the moment he took over leadership. If ownership was really what Kranz sought, why didn't he take on the advisory role when he was replaced as CEO? He decided to resign and forfeit an easy $2mil salary, equity and continued involvement in the steering of Canoo. And a counter argument to your theory is that he was also a high level exec at Faraday Future before he left to start Canoo. Has he shown any loyalty to that company? I'm sure he still has a massive amount of shares there too. The idea of him being unable to join this new company because of IP at a previous company is also moot if you just look at all the drama that unfolded between Faraday Future and Canoo when the employee's left FF to start Evelozcity (Canoo). FF tried suing for stealing but nothing ever came and now Canoo exists. My personal take.. What Kranz has tried to accomplish in his EV career has been urban mobility centric. From the iProject, to Faraday Future, to the early days of Canoo, there has been a general theme of building vehicles that revolutionize transportation in urban sprawls. When Tony gained control, the vision of Canoo completely did a 180 and is now targeting sales, logistics, blue collar America and the outdoor adventure folks. I see his acceptance of a position at Apple as Kranz hitting the retry button for the 3rd time with a company that has values that are probably more closely aligned with Kranz's own passion. I also wouldn't be surprised if some of the Canoo employees left to join Apple as you can clearly see some dissatisfaction with the new leadership at Canoo if you look at Glassdoor. Does this leave room for an Apple/Canoo partnership still? I wouldn't rule it out, but I currently can't imagine Tony & Kranz seeing eye-to-eye and wanting to partner in the future.
Well said.
Lots of great news yesterday with the VDL Nedcar contract manufacturing partnership!
yeah apple hires people when it doesnt want to pay and hire the entire company or team. they did with intel 5g. Hired intel's 5g head. maybe things didnt pan out as they wanted to n they purchased the 5g team too.
Intel has a $231b market cap, whereas Canoo has a $2.32b. Literally 1/100th, where it’s in the realm of possibilities.
not referring to apple acquiring intel. Just the 5g team. Intel's 5g team would be worth around 1-3b ballpark too. Sure apple could have paid but they did not. They did eventually acquire the team at 1b later. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/07/apple-to-acquire-the-majority-of-intels-smartphone-modem-business/