Electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors was trying to raise a Series D round of funding in 2017. It had courted Ford as a potential investor, but Jia Yueting, the founder of rival EV startup Faraday Future, had quietly amassed about a 30% stake and effectively blocked new investors.
David Stern, a mysterious businessman and close adviser to former Prince Andrew, saw an opportunity to break the bond: bring in Jeffrey Epstein.
“Ford likely to lead Lucid’s $400 million Series D. Big strategic move,” Stern he wrote to Epstein in emails released last week as part of the Justice Department’s latest release of 3 million Epstein-related documents. Jia has “huge cash problems” at Faraday, he wrote, and needs to “sell now to make payroll for his other business.”
It wasn’t the first EV startup Stern pitched to Epstein, and it wouldn’t be the last, according to hundreds of documents reviewed by TechCrunch.
At the time, legacy automakers and fledgling startups alike, fueled by Tesla’s groundbreaking success and progress from Google’s self-driving project, were jumping into electric and autonomous vehicles. And Stern was obviously hungry to take advantage of the resulting deal flow. The documents show it also made investments in Faraday Future and another EV startup, Canoo.
It is unlikely that Epstein invested in any of these. Lucid closed its Series D round in late 2018, when it raised more than $1 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Faraday eventually received a major investment from Chinese real estate group Evergrande in late 2017. Epstein said in a 2018 message included in Justice Department filings that he had no “direct” or “indirect” interest in Canoo.
Instead, these discussions provide greater insight into the many connections Epstein, a convicted sex offender, was involved in Silicon Valley startups until his arrest and death in 2019. They also provide a snapshot of a relationship not explored in previous reports.
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By the time of the Lucid emails, Epstein and Stern had worked closely together for nearly a decade, the newly released documents show. In Epstein, Stern it was “My contact with China.” To Stern, Epstein it was “My mentor and I do what he tells me.”
A “ghost” of a businessman
Stern is mostly a digital ghost with very little information available about him on the internet prior to the release of the files.
He is perhaps best known as the director of Prince Andrew’s Pitch@Palace startup competition, which ran for a few years until Andrew’s ties to Epstein were exposed. Andrew even referred to Stern as a “ghost.” an email from 2010.
Stern appears to have first approached Epstein in 2008, according to emails released by the Justice Department — just a month before the financier pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida. Stern was setting up a fund, called AGC Capital, to take advantage of the economic boom in China and wanted Epstein to invest.
(It’s not clear how Stern was introduced to Epstein. Stern did not respond to a detailed list of questions for this article.)
Stern, who is German, attended the University of London and Shi-Da University in China in the late 1990s and served as chairman of China Millennium Capital, the Chinese arm of Millennium Capital Partners, according to the biographical section of the AGC Capital pitch deck, which is in DOJ filings.
Stern also worked for Siemens, negotiating “industrial joint ventures with Chinese state-owned enterprises,” before joining Deutsche Bank’s Shanghai office. He started a company called Asia Gateway in 2001, which “advised blue chip companies, Chinese enterprises as well as the Chinese government on development and investment strategies.”
Those jobs appear to have helped Stern build relationships with powerful and wealthy Chinese businessmen, including Li Botan — the son-in-law of China’s fourth-highest leader under Xi Jinping’s predecessor, Hu Jintao. (Lee would eventually go on to become a founding investor in Canoo with Stern.)
It is unclear whether Epstein invested in AGC Capital. the financier spent the next year serving his sentence. But Stern and Epstein remained in touch, and in 2009 Stern began proposing other ideas.
The documents reveal a relationship that starts off formal and terse, with Epstein at one point nerve racking Stern for failing to properly prepare a potential business deal.
“[I]If you want to make real deals, you have to be precise and careful “every mistake is a fortune,” wrote Epstein. “[Y]Our first grader is an F.”
One of the first major projects the two men collaborated on was helping the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, her poor finances, according to the emails.
The relationship deepened over the next decade. The two men got close enough that Stern felt comfortable asking Epstein in 2016 to become the godfather of one of his children. (Epstein wrote that he was “flattered” but declined because he “made a promise to my godmother that I wouldn’t be anyone else’s godfather.”)
It is difficult to say how fruitful the relationship was from the business side. But between 2009 and 2019, Stern brought Epstein a number of potential deals in various industries.
Early on, he seemed dead set on starting a “secret” new one capital with Epstein investing together in Chinese ventures, which he referred to as JEDS — the two men’s initials combined. (Also referred to in some emails as “Serpentine Group.”) Stern later threw purchase of agricultural land in Russia, is suggested the purchase of the news organization Al Jazeera and its publicization; was discussed buying troubled music publisher EMI and considered acquiring an apparently distressed (and anonymous) submarine cable company.
They also had their eye on the banks. Stern and Epstein tried to buy the Luxembourg-based private bank Sal. Oppenheim, the emails show. In 2016 they even discussed a acquisition of Deutsche Bank, which he had for years transactions with Epstein.
Stern repeatedly highlighted his connections to high-profile businessmen and politicians in his emails to Epstein and his other contacts. In February 2012, Stern is suggested Epstein introduces Jes Staley — the head of JP Morgan’s investment bank at the time — to Malaysian politician Anwar Ibrahim.
“I know Anwar well,” Stern wrote. “If he becomes the Prime Minister of Malaysia [Staley] will clean up and could be a goldmine for JPM.” (Ibrahim lost a contested election in 2013 but became prime minister in 2022.)
Stern also claimed he had dinner with Jack Mahad a scheduled meeting”singlewith UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and said he was “friends” with the grandson of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin.
Going electric
By 2017, Stern was apparently looking at the rush to create new mobility companies.
He tried to get Epstein to meet Faraday Future founder Jia to discuss an investment. It is unclear if this ever happened. the company and Jia did not respond to requests for comment.
But former BMW and Deutsche Bank CFO Stefan Krause, who had been brought in to save Faraday Future, made a direct appeal to Epstein in April 2017.
“Faraday Future (FF) is a great story in its own right, unfortunately surrounded by a lot of noise around Jia Yueting (YT) and his other businesses (LeEco, LeMall, LeSports, to name a few). Those businesses are not working, so he’s out of cash. FF is starving,” Krause he wrote to Epstein. “Great opportunity to build a better Tesla.”
(Krause is described as Stern’s “friend” and business partner in the documents. He did not respond to a request for comment.)
It looks like those talks are over. Soon after, Stern pitched Lucid Motors’ investment.
In May 2017, a pitch deck landed in Epstein’s inbox. it was raised by a fund called Monstera which Stern had was created. “Monstera may acquire a 32% stake in Lucid through the acquisition of the stake currently controlled by Yueting Jia,” it said in a slide. Other emails show Stern expected to spend about $300 million acquire a 32% stake..
He referred to it as “fire selling” in emails. Monstera could either hold the position or “[o]ffload” the “when Ford enters.”
Ford after all pulled out and Lucid had to wait to close its Series D until August 2018, when Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund invested over $1 billion. (SEC filings show that the Saudi sovereign wealth fund bought back Jia’s shares in subsequent years. Lucid did not respond to a request for comment.)
When Krause left Faraday Future to start a new electric vehicle company in late 2017 — initially called Evelozcity and later Canoo — Stern was one of the original backers. He contributed just $1 million along with larger sums from Li, the Chinese businessman linked to the CCP, and Michael Chiang, a billionaire who runs Taiwanese electronics giant TPK. (Lee’s involvement later prompted a national security review when Canoo launched in 2020.)
In June 2018, Stern sent Epstein a document about the startup, to which Epstein replied: “fun.”
But Epstein never invested in Canoo. However, he put powerful people on Stern’s behalf. Epstein sent an email Deepak Chopra in May 2018 and told the self-help guru that “David has a new electric car company in Los Angeles.” He told Chopra “they’re going to build the next generation of health sensors into the car. You guys should talk.”
In June 2019, Epstein sent a message to Eduardo Teodorani, an Italian businessman who is a senior vice president of agricultural machinery giant CNH. “My friend David Stern … has an electric car that I think you should explore before he sells it to another partner,” Epstein wrote. Epstein too connected Stern with Sheikh Jabor al-Thani, a member of the Qatari royal family, on June 29 so he could “hear more about your car partnership.”
A week after he sent that message, Epstein was arrested. He died in prison a month later.
It is unclear when Stern last spoke to Epstein. But in March 2019, he sent a story to Epstein titled: “Warren Buffet: Electric cars are very much in America’s future.” In the body of the email, Stern he wrote: “How are we going to get him?”
