Lucid is weighing a take-private deal or a filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as restructuring adviser AlixPartners prepares to deliver findings to the company’s board before its next meeting. The review places two stark paths on the table while the company is being pressed to narrow its focus and move faster on fixes that can be seen in the factory, not just in the plan.
That is why the market is watching now. Lucid shares were flat at $5.51 in Tuesday’s pre-market session, and the company is in the deepest overhaul of its history. The next board meeting is set to receive AlixPartners’ work, making this the moment when a confidential review stops being an abstract possibility and starts narrowing toward a decision.
At the center of the recommendations is a smaller company with fewer moving parts. Chief Executive Silvio Napoli has been pushing Lucid to “build a smaller, more focused company for at least the next year,” and the adviser is reinforcing that direction by urging the board to run one more round of restructuring in the United States and Europe. The focus is meant to tighten around Gravity, the SUV that began small scale production in late 2024 and has been hit by severe quality issues since then.
Those problems matter because they are not just a launch snag. Gravity is supposed to be the product carrying Lucid through this stretch, but quality issues at a small scale stage usually mean the company has to choose between expanding output and stopping to fix defects before they spread. That is why the review also prioritizes Lucid’s robotaxi work with Uber, the second car plant in Saudi Arabia known as AMP-2, and the timeline for Cosmos, the mid-size model due to enter production late this year.
Even as the company is being told to sharpen the product plan, the board is still considering more extreme outcomes. The review calls for a pause in Lucid’s European expansion, after the company delayed its push to Austria and Spain and previously postponed its UK debut. That leaves the business pulling back in one direction while the restructuring process tests how far it might go in another.
Lucid is Saudi-backed, and speculation about a take-private has followed it for months because of the gap between what its backer has invested and where the shares now trade. Last year, previous management said it was unaware of any take-private plan by the Saudi fund. That history has not settled the question; it has only made the current review feel more consequential.
What AlixPartners will put in front of the board is more than a cost-cutting exercise. It is a road map for whether Lucid stays public, goes private, or seeks protection under Chapter 11 while trying to rescue the parts of the business that still look viable. Napoli’s push for a smaller company suggests the answer may start with Gravity and quality, but the next board meeting will show whether that is enough to avoid the more severe options now in view.
