The SEC closed its investigation into Fisker

The Securities and Exchange Commission closed its investigation into bankrupt electric vehicle startup Fisker last September, nearly a year after opening the investigation.

TechCrunch has learned that the investigation was closed when the financial regulator responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in January. The SEC’s Freedom of Information Act Directorate said it had identified “approximately 21.7 gigabytes of electronically archived records” related to the investigation. The agency does not typically make records available if investigations are still open, and explained in a follow-up email that they were “closed in September 2025.”

It is not clear how far the investigation has progressed. The SEC disclosed the existence of the investigation in an October 2024 filing in Fisker’s bankruptcy case. The agency wrote at the time that it had sent subpoenas to the company and that it may need to “request or subpoena additional documents in the future related to its ongoing investigation.”

An agency spokesman declined to comment. Founder and former CEO Henrik Fisker did not respond to a message seeking comment.

The closure of the Fisker investigation comes amid a significant decline in enforcement actions and settlements during President Trump’s second term. The SEC initiated 313 enforcement actions in 2025 — the lowest in a decade and down 27% from the final year of President Biden’s term, according to an analysis by law firm Paul Weiss. Only four of those enforcement actions were against public companies. Total cash settlements have fallen by 45% since 2024.

Fisker was one of the last remaining electric vehicle startups under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Over the past few years, the agency has settled fraud or other charges against Nikola, Lordstown Motors, Canoo, Hizon Motors, and others. In 2023, it closed the investigation into Lucid Motors without filing a lawsuit.

The only known active investigation remaining into electric vehicle startups is the Faraday Future investigation, which is now nearly four years old. In July 2025, the SEC sent Faraday and several executives “Wells Notices,” or letters informing the subject that investigators were recommending enforcement action. No action has been taken since those letters were sent, and Faraday’s regulatory filings indicate it has yet to respond to Wells’ notices.

Fisker filed for bankruptcy in June 2024 amid a host of problems with its first electric vehicle, the Ocean SUV. The company spent years making bold promises about developing radical new technologies, but it deviated from those ideas several times. It also faced major financial problems in the period leading up to its collapse. It used the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process to sell its remaining Oceans stock to a company that rents vehicles to taxi drivers and liquidate its other assets.