EV startup Faraday Future paid $7.5 million to a company with ties to founder Jia Yueting.

Faraday Future paid about $7.5 million in 2025 to a company controlled by founder Jia Yueting, according to new regulatory filings.

The long-struggling electric vehicle startup paid off its bills in a year, delivering just four vehicles and incurring nearly $400 million in losses. The company has shifted its focus to selling inexpensive vans and robots imported from China.

The payments were made while Faraday Future was still under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which was looking into so-called “related party transactions” between the company and companies related to or controlled by Zia, according to Faraday Future’s own filings. The SEC was also investigating whether Faraday Future adequately represented the level of control Jia had over the company when it went public in 2021, and whether Faraday Future lied about early EV sales in 2023.

As first reported by TechCrunch, the SEC suspended its four-year investigation in March, despite having sent notices to Faraday Future, Zia and other executives last year that the agency was recommending enforcement action. The closure of the investigation comes amid a historic decline in white-collar crime enforcement under the second Trump administration.

The new deal was disclosed in Faraday Future’s annual proxy filing issued Thursday. It said Faraday Future paid a combined $100,000 in monthly “consulting” fees, $2 million in “bonus payments” and $1.7 million in loan repayments from a company called FF Global Partners LLC. The company did not explain the remaining $2.6 million in its filing.

Faraday Future did not respond to a request for comment.

Faraday Future described FF Global in its proxy filing as an “affiliate” of Jia, and said in previous filings that he had “significant influence” over the LLC. FF Global has five “voting managers,” one of whom is Mr. Jia, and the others include his nephew Jerry Wang, a business associate and his family.

Mr. Wang, Faraday Future’s president, earns a six-figure salary from FF Global, according to filings. So does his wife, who heads FF Global’s legal department. FF Global also has a similar “consulting agreement” with a cryptocurrency holding company run by Wang (and advised by Jia) called AIXC. (Mr. Wang’s wife’s law firm also provides consulting for AIXC.)

FF Global is also a major shareholder in Faraday Future, and together with Jia controls nearly every aspect of the EV company, which Faraday cited as a risk factor in its latest annual report.

The company said earlier this year that “Jia and FF Global, over which Mr. Jia exercises significant influence, control our management, business, and operations, and may use this control in ways that are inconsistent with our business and financial goals and strategies, or inconsistent with our interests.”

FF Global also helped Mr. Jia return to power after going public in 2021. Immediately after Faraday Future merged with a special acquisition vehicle, the newly public company’s board of directors began an investigation into Mr. Jia’s inflows and outflows into the company, as well as disclosures made during the merger process.

In early 2022, the board removed Mr. Jia, who is on China’s blacklist for financial fraud, after finding that Faraday Future had misrepresented his level of control over the company. They then reported their findings to the SEC, which immediately launched an investigation.

Meanwhile, FF Global spent much of 2022 replacing certain directors with board members friendly to Jia. The campaign became so intense that several directors received death threats. These board members ultimately resigned, in part because they feared for their lives. Jia was reappointed as co-CEO last year and is now Faraday Future’s sole CEO.

FF Global is not the only Jia-related company that Faraday Future has paid or will pay money to. The company said in a proxy filing that it paid $700,000 last year to a loan company connected to him. He also owes $8.5 million in “advertising services” to Leshi Information Technology Co. Ltd., one of the affiliates of his bankrupt Chinese tech conglomerate LeEco.