Lucid Unleashes Big Developments -- Is It Finally Time to Buy?

Investors interested in the electric vehicle (EV) industry, hoping perhaps to find the next high-flying Tesla stock, are probably intrigued by Lucid (NASDAQ: LCID). It's a young company recently off the launch of its Gravity SUV, which will vastly expand the company's addressable market, bring pricing down from its first vehicle, and cover one of the most important segments in the auto industry.

Lucid even finished 2025 by notching its eighth consecutive quarter of record deliveries. The momentum is real. Despite all its positive momentum, and its recent big news, the stock might still be a big sell.

What's going on?

Lucid investors had a full plate to digest last week when the company unloaded a number of announcements. The first announcement was that Lucid named its new leader. Silvio Napoli will leave his role as the CEO of a Swiss company and take over as Lucid's CEO, which opens the door for the former interim CEO, Marc Winteroff, to return to his former job as COO.

Napoli may not be a familiar name, and he doesn't have roots in the automotive industry. However, Lucid hopes his long career working in industrial manufacturing businesses will mean that the company benefits from his immense experience with cost discipline and operational scaling. On most days, that would be enough for investors to digest, but this wasn't an ordinary news day for Lucid. It also announced multiple funding developments.

Ayar Third Investment Company, which is an affiliate of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), agreed to purchase $550 million of the company's convertible preferred stock. Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER) agreed to send Lucid an additional $200 million to bring its total investment in the young EV maker to $500 million. Last, but not least, Lucid also priced an underwritten public offering of common stock for gross proceeds of $300 million.

Despite the company finding its new long-term leader, stringing together a number of record quarterly deliveries, and raising additional capital, Lucid's stock has shed nearly 70% of its value over the past year alone. Is it still a sell?

Image source: Lucid.

Bumpy road ahead

Lucid is moving in the right direction and its momentum is real, but none of its recent announcements change the fact that it is burning through mountains of cash. Lucid's cash burn accelerated in 2025, and the fourth quarter alone had negative cash flow of $1.25 billion. At the end of 2025, Lucid had roughly $4.6 billion in total liquidity and roughly $1 billion in cash. This has some analysts believing its cash runway will end as soon as 2027 without additional capital raises.

Over the past three years, Lucid's shares outstanding -- one way for investors to grasp shareholder dilution -- grew at twice the pace of rival Rivian. Furthermore, Lucid has work to do catching Rivian with gross profitability improvements, as the latter registered its first full year of positive gross profit in 2025. Lucid's new CEO might be the exact right hire to help improve operations and unit economics, and drive gross profitability. However, until investors see progress, the stock is likely still too risky and speculative for the vast majority of investors.

Daniel Miller has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.