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After its multibillion-dollar bid to become the next Tesla failed, El Segundo’s Faraday Future is pivoting to humanoid robots.
The company says it is applying the expertise and infrastructure it gained through its electric vehicle journey to become a front-runner in the global robot race.
Skeptics say they are still uncertain whether its robots, which can dance, will change its narrative. Its share price has tumbled more than 99% from peaks in 2021 as it has struggled to attract enough buyers for its $300,000 electric vehicles.
At the company’s headquarters on a recent Tuesday, a mini robot waved its arms and moved its feet to a Dua Lipa song. A full-size bot swung its hips and karate kicked to an electronic beat. It was an impressive display, but the company says the AI-powered humanoids are capable of much more.
The robots will be assembled in California and used for education, housework, warehouse jobs and more, said Chris Chen, Faraday Future’s co-chief executive of robotics.
Tesla has spent just $2.5 billion of the $25 billion in 2026 capital expenditures it forecast in April, raising questions about whether it’s spending enough to deliver progress.
“The robot has to be useful or helpful to people,” said Chen, who has been with the company for more than a decade. “We are not trying to build a single robot. We are trying to build a holistic physical AI infrastructure.”
Faraday Future needs a new business to build buzz because its EV venture has failed to live up to the hype. The company sold only 16 FF 91 EVs from 2023 to 2025, according to Autoweek. Analysts don’t expect much better performance from the FF 91 2.0, which is available for preorder with a sticker price of $300,000.
Faraday Future’s shares peaked with excitement about its EV plans in 2021 and have been sliding since then. They were last trading below $2 on Wednesday. It had to perform a reverse stock split in July to avoid being delisted from the Nasdaq stock market. A reverse split is when a company reduces its number of traded shares to increase the value of each share
The company announced second-quarter earnings last month, reporting a net loss of $39 million as it didn’t sell enough EVs or robots.
“It comes as no surprise that they have decided to chase the next shiny object of robotics just as Tesla and so many Chinese companies have done,” said Sam Abuelsamid, a mobility analyst at Telemetry. “I really don’t see any of these being particularly useful in education, and the home market is also likely to be minimal.”
Faraday Future says its expensive battery-powered luxury vehicles were never meant for the mass market, and it is developing a more affordable electric van that could be delivered as early as next year.
The company was founded in 2014 with high ambitions and the backing of a Chinese billionaire. It originally set up shop in 2015 in an industrial corner of Gardena, near a pet cemetery. It recruited former Tesla employees and worked out of a former Nissan office, intending to give Tesla some competition.
