Henrik Fisker Shut Down Nonprofit After EV Startup Bankruptcy
▼ Summary
– Henrik and Geeta Fisker quietly closed their private charitable foundation in 2024, six months after Fisker Inc. went bankrupt.
– The foundation, established in late 2021, only distributed around $100,000 in grants over its three-year existence.
– Initially funded with $4 million in Fisker Inc. stock, the foundation’s assets plummeted in value as the company’s stock price declined.
– The Fiskers also donated $1.9 million in company stock to a donor-advised fund in 2021, which allows for private and delayed charitable giving.
– The foundation’s brief lifespan reflects the broader rise and fall of many EV startups that went public via SPAC mergers in the early 2020s.
Henrik Fisker, the founder of the now-defunct electric vehicle company Fisker Inc., and his wife Geeta have quietly dissolved a private charitable foundation they established in late 2021. The organization was originally intended to foster innovation across healthcare, education, sustainability, and mobility, with a mission to support planetary health and improve lives for both people and animals. A tax document filed with the IRS in December 2024, six months after Fisker Inc. declared bankruptcy, marked the final return for the Geeta & Henrik Fisker Foundation.
During its three-year existence, the foundation distributed approximately $100,000 in grants. Henrik Fisker has not publicly commented on the closure.
The short lifespan of the Fiskers’ philanthropic effort reflects the broader trajectory of many electric vehicle startups that surged during the early 2020s, particularly those that went public through SPAC mergers. Unlike Rivian, which launched its own foundation with an initial endowment of 1% of company equity, valued at one point near $643 million, the Fisker initiative struggled almost from the start.
IRS records indicate the Fiskers transferred 229,000 shares of Fisker Inc. stock to the foundation in December 2021, worth roughly $4 million at the time. The couple also contributed around $5,000 in cash during that first year. Geeta Gupta Fisker, who served as the company’s chief financial and operating officer, was closely involved in these efforts.
When the foundation was formally announced in February 2022, the press release highlighted the $4 million donation. By then, however, the value of the shares had already dropped to approximately $2.7 million. No grants were issued in the foundation’s first fiscal year, and by September 2022, the stock’s value had fallen further to $1.7 million.
As Fisker Inc. began production of its electric SUV in late 2022 and initiated customer deliveries in mid-2023, the company faced significant challenges, including flawed vehicle performance and sluggish sales. These struggles directly impacted the foundation’s capacity to operate. In the 2022 fiscal year, the organization made just one grant, $92,287 to a J.P. Morgan Charitable Gift Fund. Cash contributions from the Fiskers that year totaled only $9,500, while the value of their remaining shares fell to about $1.4 million.
The foundation’s final filing showed one more grant in its last year: $1,988, again directed to the J.P. Morgan fund.
Although the Geeta & Henrik Fisker Foundation has shut down, it was not the couple’s only charitable vehicle. A 2022 press release mentioned that since founding Fisker Inc. in 2016, the pair had supported various causes related to education and healthcare. That same release noted a separate donation of $1.9 million in company stock to a donor-advised fund (DAF) in December 2021, made from the Fiskers’ personal trust rather than the foundation.
Donor-advised funds allow contributors to recommend how assets are distributed while offering tax advantages and privacy. Because DAFs are not required to disclose grant details or timing, it remains unclear whether the $1.9 million in Fisker stock was ever deployed to charitable causes, especially as its value declined sharply over time.
(Source: TechCrunch)
