[Business scandal] [Half-assed effort post] Quantumscape, a solid-state battery start-up

My favorite scandals are always corporate frauds like Theranos or Nikola.

Stumbled upon a new one.

Basically, there is a solid-state battery start-up called QuantumScape which went public via an SPAC last year (SPACs are a slightly shady way of going public; it involves a blank-check company....some people think there will be a reckoning in the market soon with a recent deluge of possibly sh*tty companies entering the markets this way). My understanding (gleaned from the article) is if they were able to achieve solid-state batteries it would basically be a huge leap forward in battery technology with extended charges, fast charging. (Please feel free to correct me, I'm not an engineer). An article from June describes the technology and its potential and mentions the company hit a valuation greater than Ford in December 2020. It has since plummeted.

A hedgefund called Scorpion released a presentation basically accusing the company of being a pump and dump scheme. They say the CEO kept going on CNBC to pump his stock so that it wouldn't fall before the lock-up period ended (ie, he isn't allowed to sell his shares right after they first go public, so he needs the stock price to stay high until he can cash out).

The presentation: https://scorpioncapital.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/reports/QS1.pdf

It's a bit dry but there are some hilarious quotes from former employees at the beginning.

Meme stock r-slurs who have seen the stock go from a peak of around $131 to $21 today are absolutely livid about the report: https://old.reddit.com/r/QuantumScape/comments/mrhtxc/scorpion_capital_is_fake_news/

There is also this subreddit as well: https://old.reddit.com/r/QUANTUMSCAPE_Stock/ featuring cope such as this: https://old.reddit.com/r/QUANTUMSCAPE_Stock/comments/pawsg8/patience_will_let_us_win_this_game_and_get_huge/