October 7, 2024

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Atlis Motor Vehicles, an electric vehicle startup based in Mesa, Arizona, said this week that it had gained conditional approval from the Nasdaq Stock Market to list its shares, but public financial documents show that company still faces several hurdles before reaching production, AZ Inno reports.
AMV, which was founded in 2016, is still years away from putting one of its electric trucks on the road, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission dated Aug. 26.
The company predicts it will need an additional $418 million over the course of four years to finalize its prototype, obtain regulatory approvals and scale production before reaching profitability. To date the company has raised about $32 million.
“Uncertainty exists as to whether our business will have sufficient funds over the next 12 months, thereby making an investment in Atlis speculative,” the company wrote in the filing.
 
CEO Mark Hanchett founded AMV in 2016 with a grand vision of becoming the next electric vehicle luminary, offering its own electric battery cells and packs, rapid charging stations and pickup trucks designed to weather rugged work environments.
Other EV startups, such as Tesla and Arizona-based Nikola Corp., rely on other companies to provide the critical battery cells. 
Six years after its founding, AMV claims a self-determined valuation of $1.9 billion, according to its fundraising website. There has been no independent valuation of the AMV shares, the company wrote in the Aug. 26 filing.
“Any valuation of Atlis at this stage is pure speculation,” the company wrote in the Aug. 26 filing.
Read the full story in AZ Inno here.
Baltimore’s RareBreed Ventures is partnering with two other venture capital firms as part of an innovative fundraising arrangement that will allow smaller investors to contribute to large funds, according to Maryland Inno.
RareBreed founder McKeever (Mac) Conwell said the new initiative will pool many small investments into a single, larger entity, known as a special purpose vehicle or SPV, that will exist separately from the three participating VC firms, which besides Rarebreed include Portland, Oregon’s Rogue Women’s Fund and VITALIZE Venture Capital in Chicago.
The idea is that, by creating a single entity that’s separate from the three funds, it will allow for lower minimum investments than what is required under regulations for relatively large funds. That potentially opens up a new source of capital and makes investing more accessible to a larger audience.
The three companies hope to raise $10 million in total through the initiative.
Portland entrepreneur Jeni Nguyen wanted a piece of furniture that would work for her and her beloved bunnies Elvis and Betty, but couldn’t find anything that worked. So she created Bink Rabbit Goods, a company dedicated to elevating products for bunnies and those who love them.
The first product is a piece of furniture that is stylish but also functional for holding a litter box and containing the endless supply of hay rabbits require. It comes in two sizes, a credenza and bench. She focused on living room furniture since rabbits need large areas to run and in most homes the living room is the largest room used for free-range house bunnies.
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