TheChek News Flow

This week was another good illustration of the fundraising market. Only five U.S.-based startups raised six-figure rounds and none even broke the $200 million mark. A year ago, it wasn’t uncommon for at least a trio of startups to raise a quarter-billion dollars every week. These are definitely much different times.

1. Electric Hydrogen, $198M, cleantech: With most companies looking to cut emissions, many investors are looking to put money into cleantech startups that can help them accomplish that feat. This week, they invested in Boston-based Electric Hydrogen, which closed a $198 million Series B—a mix of equity and venture debt—led by Fifth Wall Climate Tech. The round also consisted of an impressive list of strategic investors such as Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Honeywell and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Electric Hydrogen has created its own patented approach to electrolysis—the process of producing hydrogen from electricity and water—designed for industrial applications. Those applications account for more than a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. The cleantech and clean energy sectors saw a record $10.1 billion invested in VC-backed startups last year, and $5.3 billion already has come into the market this year, according to Crunchbase data.

2. FalconX, $150M, crypto: No matter what happens in crypto, it seems like every week some startup locks up a huge round. This week, San Francisco-based FalconX was that startup, raising a $150 million Series D that more than doubled its valuation from just 10 months ago. The new round was led by GIC and B Capital, and values the company at $8 billion. In August, the company closed a $210 million Series C at a $3.75 billion valuation. The round also included investment from other big names like Thoma Bravo, Wellington Management, Adams Street and Tiger Global Management. FalconX’s platform allows institutions to access and manage their crypto assets. The crypto market has had a rocky go of it this year for investors. The two largest cryptocurrencies—Bitcoin and Ether—have lost more than half their value from their November highs, and some lending platforms, such as Celsius Network, suspended withdrawals and transfers due to market uncertainty and liquidity issues. Nevertheless, investors still seem intrigued. FalconX has now raised more than $430 million, according to the company.

3. Magic Eden, $130M, NFTs: Similar to its parent industry crypto, NFTs also are reportedly having some issues. Nevertheless, NFT marketplace Mountain View, California-based Magic Eden closed a $130 million round to reach a valuation of $1.6 billion this week. The round was co-led by Electric Capital and Greylock. Magic Eden’s marketplace allows users to create, buy and collect NFTs. Its primary marketplace has rolled out more than 250 projects since launching last year and its secondary market has more than 7,000 listed collections.

4. Alladapt Immunotherapeutics, $119M, biotech: If you have food allergies, Menlo Park, California-based Alladapt Immunotherapeutics may be a company to watch. The clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company closed a $119 million financing round led by Enavate Sciences this week. Those proceeds will be used to help the firm develop its ADP101 product, which the company says “has the potential to be the first FDA-approved therapy to treat the majority of U.S. food allergy patients.” Founded in 2018, the company has now raised $179 million, according to Crunchbase.

5. Prime Trust, $100M, fintech: Helping financial institutions compete in the digital world can be hard. Las Vegas-based Prime Trust tries to make it a little easier. The company closed a $100 million-plus Series B—with FIS, Fin Capital, Mercato Partners and Kraken Ventures among the leading investors, the company said. Prime Trust offers the actual infrastructure needed by crypto exchanges, on-ramps, wallet apps, broker dealers and banks to offer financial services in the digital world. The company will use the new proceeds to further push its own crypto IRA. Prime Trust has raised more than $170 million in funding, according to the company.

6. Ledger Investing, $75M, financial services: New York-based Ledger Investing, a marketplace for insurance risk, raised $75 million in Series B funding led by WestCap. Founded in 2016, the company has raised nearly $91 million, Crunchbase data shows.

7. Openly, $75M, insurance: Boston-based Openly, the technology-enabled provider of homeowners insurance, closed a $75 million Series C from Advance Venture Partners, Clocktower Technologu Ventures, Obvious Ventures and others. Founded in 2017, the company has raised more than $137 million, according to Crunchbase.

8. DEM BioPharma, $70M, biotech: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based immuno-oncology company DEM BioPharma raised an initial $70 million of financing led by founding investor Longwood Fund and Alta Partners.

9. MicroTransponder, $53M, medical devices: Austin, Texas-based neuroscience medical device developer MicroTransponder closed a $53 million Series E led by US Venture Partners. Founded in 2007, the company has raised $95 million, according to Crunchbase.

10.Autobooks, $50M, fintech: Detroit-based payment and accounting platform Autobooks raised a $50 million Series C round led by Macquarie Capital. Founded in 2015, the company has raised nearly $98 million, according to Crunchbase.

With the U.S. rounds rather small this week, the top three global rounds came from Europe.

June has been a hot one across the country; see where the temperatures have been most oppressive

Sweltering heat gripped much of the U.S. this week, from the Midwest to the South, sending temperatures to record-breaking levels and putting millions of people under heat advisories. A reprieve for the Midwest is forecast to come this weekend, but high temperatures are expected to persist in Texas and across the South into next week, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The recent heat spell comes on the heels of stifling temperatures last week, creating what has been an unseasonably hot June for many cities in the U.S.

Hot, dry conditions in the Southwest and parts of California have exacerbated tinderbox conditions for forest fires. Much of the region has been experiencing an extended and severe drought, although the start of monsoon season brought much-needed rain to parts of Arizona and New Mexico this week.

A dome of high pressure, sometimes called a heat dome, generated above-normal to record-breaking temperatures this month, the National Weather Service said. A heat dome occurs when the atmosphere traps hot air “like a lid or cap,” according to the weather service, creating large areas of sweltering heat.

The persistent heat this month led more of the Southern and Eastern U.S. to experience temperatures exceeding 95 degrees Fahrenheit at this point in the year than in the previous two years.

The recent hot weather follows a trend of increasingly warm starts to summer. Four of the five hottest Junes since 1895 have occurred in the past 10 years.

New records were set for maximum daily high temperatures this month in several cities, according to NOAA. St. Louis reached a new high of 99 degrees on June 13. Chicago’s O’Hare Airport hit 96 on June 15. Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport notched 102 on June 20. Minneapolis reached 101 Monday, breaking the previous record for that day by three degrees.

Many cities experienced daily highs well above historical averages.

Current forecasts show extreme heat weakening across the South through the weekend, though high temperatures will linger along the Gulf Coast through next week, NOAA forecasts.

While energy security has increased political ambitions for the clean-burning fuel, investors have become more skeptical about what remains a distant opportunity

Vladimir Putin has given low-carbon hydrogen projects a lift this year, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the stock market.

Mr. Putin’s mounting threats to Europe’s natural gas supplies have strengthened the case for developing clean-burning hydrogen, both politically and economically. Many governments have doubled down on hydrogen commitments that increase fossil fuel importers’ energy security, while high prices for coal, gas and European Union carbon credits have also improved the cost competitiveness of so-called green hydrogen, made by splitting water with renewable energy.

New projects just keep coming. Most recently, BP and TotalEnergies TTE 4.35%▲ unveiled billion-dollar hydrogen investments. Big oil companies are notable players because they bring cash, megaproject expertise, political influence and experience in processing, transporting and selling gases.

Yet pure-play hydrogen stocks have significantly underperformed the market, with some share prices nearly halving. Last week’s decision by German industrial icon Thyssenkrupp to shelve its plans for a minority listing of its hydrogen division underlined that point. Investors are being put off by higher interest rates, slow policy decisions and a hangover from 2020’s astronomical jump in valuations.

Rising interest rates reduce the expected value of returns on longer-term, cash-hungry plays like clean hydrogen. Most projects won’t start producing the gas at scale for at least another half-decade. Manufacturers of the electrolyzers that produce green hydrogen and the fuel cells that use it to produce power are in the midst of scaling their operations, which is a relatively high-cost phase. In many cases, their profit margins have also suffered recently as small production runs limit their power to negotiate in the face of cost inflation or supply chain delays.

Another hurdle is political. Despite all the high-level talk, government action on detailed policy to back it up has been slow. In the U.S., cheap, clean hydrogen is an “earthshot” ambition for the Energy Department, but crucial hydrogen tax credits were stalled in the Build Back Better bill, though there are some efforts to revive them. The EU doubled its 2030 hydrogen targets to help replace Russian fuels, but officials are still debating important details of the infrastructure rollout and what will qualify for incentives. Policy incentives have primarily focused on supply, but demand needs help too.

“The policies to support the deployment in Europe are still delayed. They’ve got I don’t know how many hundreds of megawatts of projects that are there, which are just waiting,” says Pierre-Etienne Franc of Hy24, a clean hydrogen infrastructure fund that recently raised more than €1.6 billion, equivalent to $1.7 billion.

Strong policy support in Asia is helping to develop the market there. Some worry that China might come to dominate manufacturing of hydrogen equipment as it does with solar panels. But electrolyzers’ in-life service requirements could help local players to compete, as has happened with suppliers of wind turbines.

Even after this year’s falls, hydrogen stocks remain expensive on enterprise values of between 3 and 26 times sales. ITM Power, NEL and McPhy Energy make electrolyzers, while Ballard Power Systems, Powercell Sweden and Plug Power manufacture fuel cells. Ceres Power and Bloom Energy are working on the more experimental solid oxide technology.

How long their stocks flounder depends partly on central bankers, but politicians may also need to match their hydrogen promises with more action before the current malaise has a good chance of clearing.

The proxy adviser, which had recommended exploring bid from JetBlue, reverses position after Frontier boosted offer for Spirit

Proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. recommended Spirit Airlines Inc. SAVE 2.90%▲ investors vote for a proposed merger with Frontier Airlines, ULCC 6.57%▲ reversing its position on the deal after Frontier sweetened its offer Friday.

“On balance, support for the merger with Frontier on the revised terms is warranted,” ISS wrote in a report that was published late Friday and made public Saturday.

ISS had previously said Spirit investors would be better off rejecting that deal so Spirit could negotiate more seriously with JetBlue Airways Corp., JBLU 5.77%▲ which has also been vying to buy Spirit.

On Friday, Frontier Group Holdings Inc. raised its offer for Spirit, adding an additional $2 per share in cash. It also said it would prepay $2.22 per share, and increased the reverse termination fee it would pay to Spirit if regulators block the deal to $350 million, matching the reverse termination fee JetBlue had promised.

“Given these facts and circumstances, the current offer from Frontier appears preferable,” ISS wrote.

JetBlue had earlier this week sweetened its offer again to $33.50 per share, or roughly $3.7 billion. Frontier’s offer is a mixture of stock and $4.13 a share in cash, including the most recent increase. At Friday’s closing prices, the Frontier deal would be valued at about $2.7 billion.

While JetBlue’s offer is higher than the current value of Frontier’s, ISS said it “may appear to be opportunistic” given the potential value of an airline recovery. On the other hand, investors may prefer JetBlue’s cash deal, which could provide protection from a potential economic downturn, ISS said.

Frontier’s offer overall provides both potential upside compensation in the event that regulators bar a deal, ISS concluded.

“Shareholders have clearly benefited from the bidding war between Frontier and JetBlue,” ISS wrote.

JetBlue didn’t immediately comment on the ISS recommendation Saturday. On Friday JetBlue said that it believes its most recent offer is “decisively superior” to Frontier’s and that it would continue to campaign against the Frontier deal ahead of the upcoming Spirit shareholder vote, which is scheduled for June 30.

The new recommendation is a boon to Frontier’s efforts to buy Spirit, a rival discounter. The two airlines agreed to merge in February, but JetBlue later swooped in with an all-cash offer and has mounted an aggressive push to win over Spirit investors.

Spirit initially rejected JetBlue, saying that it didn’t believe antitrust regulators would sign off on that merger. JetBlue then launched a hostile bid, appealing to shareholders in hopes of pressuring Spirit management to reopen talks.

ISS originally said that the Spirit board’s view that the Frontier deal would have an easier regulatory path appeared reasonable. But, the firm said, both deals could face significant regulatory uncertainty, and JetBlue’s offer provided more certainty to shareholders if the deal was blocked.

When Frontier added a $250 million breakup fee to its offer, JetBlue quickly topped it.

Spirit delayed a shareholder vote that was originally scheduled for early this month in order to take more time to negotiate with both Frontier and JetBlue.

Swaths of investors vote in line with proxy advisory firms’ recommendations, making it risky for a company to hold a vote if it hasn’t won the advisory firms’ support. While another proxy advisory firm had backed the Frontier merger, an industry analyst had said Spirit and Frontier likely would need approval from ISS as well to go forward.

Two moves in past week that prevent most transwomen from competing have drawn ire of rights advocates

Sporting administrators around the world have agonised over whether transwomen athletes should be allowed to take part in elite competition. Moves by two sports in the past week to effectively ban most transwomen have increased pressure on policymakers to clarify their positions on an issue that resonates far beyond the sporting arena.

Following months of research and input from legal, scientific and athletic perspectives, Fina, the governing body of elite swimming, ruled last weekend that transwomen would not be allowed to compete in women’s events if they had experienced male puberty.

Rugby League announced two days later that it too would bar transwomen from international competition, pending further research into the potential risks of allowing them to participate.

The decisions have drawn the ire of transgender rights advocates and sparked further debate among sports executives over the criteria for eligibility in elite events, as several more federations mull their own policies for trans athletes.

“The fundamental circle to square is this debate of inclusivity versus fairness,” said one sporting official briefed on transgender policy formation. “When the two clash, we want to encourage participation but it has to be trumped by fairness. It’s hellishly, hellishly difficult.”

The ban in swimming — the first by a marquee Olympic sport — came after Lia Thomas in March become the first known transgender woman to win a US national collegiate swimming title.

A host of other international sport federations, including for football, badminton, cycling, hockey, athletics and lacrosse, have this month updated or said they intended to review rules governing gender eligibility.

Sports administrators are seeking to juggle a small but growing body of research on performance advantages by sex with efforts to preserve a spirit of inclusiveness.

Olivia Hunt, policy director for the US National Center for Transgender Equality, said the new Fina policy “really highlights the need for transgender and nonbinary athletes and their supporters to be more active in advocating for their rights to participate.” 

She alluded to the backlash against Thomas, adding that “the swimming world’s outrageous reaction over the past few months to a single transwoman doing well in a single event makes it clear there are policymakers whose decisions are guided by a desire to ensure trans youth are excluded.”

Sebastian Coe, World Athletics president, said at an event in Hungary last week that the Fina ban was “in the best interests of its sport”, adding: “If we ever get pushed into a corner to that point where we are making a judgment about fairness or inclusion, I will always fall down on the side of fairness.”

Sports stakeholders say the flurry of policy formation on trans participation has come at the behest of the International Olympic Committee, which in November released a framework urging international sports federations to determine eligibility criteria for themselves.

An IOC spokesperson said that the individual sports bodies “are well placed to define the factors that contribute to performance advantage in the context of their own sport.”

Among sporting organisations which have updated their policies, the basis of their eligibility criteria vary widely. The international governing body for cycling, UCI, determined last week based on a handful of studies that transwomen must undergo a transition period of at least 24 months, up from 12, in order to “reverse” the physiological advantages inherent to biological males.

Principally, according to research cited by UCI, it takes at least two years to adapt muscle strength and power to levels common among biological females.

By contrast, team sports and especially contact sports cite different research. World Rugby determined in 2020 that the sport’s “unique context of combining strength, power, speed and endurance in a physical, collision environment” makes it unsafe for trans women to participate in women’s rugby, although it committed to funding further research on the topic. In other sports, other factors such as height, heart size and arm length have become discussion points.

Joanna Harper, a transwoman long-distance runner and PhD candidate researching trans athletes at Loughborough University in the UK, said available studies were not yet comprehensive enough to set widespread policy formation.

“To a certain extent, sports federations need to wing it, to do the best they can with the data that exist, and understand that as we get more and better data they’ll be able to make better policy,” she said.

Some sports have indicated they may take a more inclusive approach to transwomen’s participation, including World Lacrosse which is set to discuss the matter at a board meeting next week. USA Swimming said they were “being deliberate in our review” of Fina’s effective ban.

Governance of transgender representation in sport is linked to but nuanced from earlier regulations on athletes with differences in sex development, also known as DSD or intersex.

Though there are myriad differences between the circumstances facing trans and intersex athletes, sporting bodies and advocates say there is room for improvement on treating both constituencies more humanely.

The IOC framework includes provisions for sport federations to avoid “gynaecological examinations or similar forms of invasive physical examinations” to determine an athlete’s sex or gender.

Hunt, the NCTE policy director, said that “intersex athletes as well as trans and nonbinary athletes deserve to participate in sport under policies that focus on fairness and inclusion for all athletes — including them.”

Harper also made the point that sport may be seeking to solve a problem that barely exists, given how few self-identifying transgender athletes are even close to competing in elite level sports.

“No transwoman has competed in international level swimming, ever. Why are they so worried about this?” Harper asked. “They’re trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.”

SocGen suggests S&P 500 will bottom out over next six months

Investors are questioning how much further US stocks will slide this year, after a protracted sell-off that knocked Wall Street’s S&P 500 more than a fifth below its January peak.

Fears have intensified that the US central bank will tip the world’s largest economy into recession, in a bid to tackle soaring inflation with higher interest rates. In turn, the S&P tumbled into bear market territory in recent weeks, commonly defined as a correction of 20 per cent or more from a recent high-point.

Asking whether the bottom is now in sight, Société Générale examined 56 “crisis” periods for US stock market corrections over the past 150 years — pertaining to sell-offs that have fuelled drawdowns greater than 10 per cent for the S&P 500.

Identifying 30 bear markets since 1870, the French bank said that history suggests the S&P should bottom out over the next six months at about 34 per cent to 40 per cent below its peak reached at the start of 2022.

Solomon Tadesse, SocGen’s head of equity quant research for North America, said that further declines for US equities were likely as tighter monetary policy may lead to stagflation — a combination of persistent inflation and little or negative economic growth.

Tadesse pointed out that the current correction for the US stock market is not atypical compared with history. By contrast, the speed and the scale of the rebound for Wall Street from the coronavirus-induced low in March 2020 was extraordinary.

The S&P 500 surged 113 per cent higher after bottoming out on 23 March 2020, boosted by huge injections of liquidity provided by the Fed and generous emergency public spending measures to counteract the pandemic. “The post-Covid market surge now appears highly excessive,” says Tadesse. That led to an unsustainable bubble which is now deflating, he added.

Investors may brace themselves for more volatility on the stock market until they are satisfied that the Fed has regained control over inflation — currently running at a 40-year high of 8.6 per cent.

Negotiations between UK, France, Germany, Russia China and indirectly the US have been on hold since March

Iran and the EU said talks to revive the 2015 nuclear accord between the Islamic republic and leading global powers would restart “in the coming days”, beginning with indirect talks between Tehran and the US.

“We are ready to resume the talks,” Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister, said on Saturday at a joint press conference with Josep Borrell, Europe’s top diplomat, who is visiting the country. “What matters to the Islamic republic is to thoroughly enjoy the economic benefits of the agreement we reached in 2015 . . . [or else] it will not be acceptable” to Iran.

Borrell said that “the coming days [literally] means the coming days. I mean quickly, immediately”.

The EU-brokered talks between the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China — and indirectly with the US — stalled in March after a year of tough negotiations.

Under the agreement — known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — Iran rolled back its enrichment activities in exchange for the US lifting many sanctions. But in 2018 then-US president Donald Trump pulled out of the agreement and imposed the toughest sanctions ever against any country on terrorism charges. It prompted Iran to resume uranium enrichment in 2019, and it has now reached levels close to weapons grade.

US president Joe Biden is willing to resurrect the agreement but Trump’s designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organisation is seen as a major obstacle.

As well as being Iran’s most powerful security and military organisation the elite force also runs a business empire. Iran is concerned that the terrorist designation will deprive the country of economic benefits under the accord and insists that it be removed. Analysts warn Biden may not be able to do this as it could further complicate domestic politics.

Borrell said there “are decisions that have to be taken in Tehran and in Washington. But we agreed today that this visit will be followed by the resumption of the negotiations also between Iran and [the] US, facilitated by my team to try to solve the last outstanding issues.”

He said that his visit’s objective was to “break the current dynamic of escalation and to break the stalemate of the negotiations”, adding that “it was of paramount importance to give a new momentum to bring the JCPOA on track.”

Later on Saturday at another press conference for foreign media based in Tehran, Borrell clarified that the talks would not take place in Vienna for now, but rather there would be talks in a Gulf littoral state “to solve political differences” between Iran and the US. The talks would still be indirect with EU mediation, he said. After that, all sides could go back to Vienna for a ministerial meeting and final discussions.

Amirabdollahian also said he hoped the US would be “realistic, fair” and “responsible and committed”.

Enrique Mora, the EU envoy co-ordinating indirect talks in Vienna between Iran and the US, accompanied Borrell to Tehran. Before heading there he posted a picture on Twitter of a dinner in Brussels with Robert Malley, the US’s special Iran envoy. The picture has been taken by analysts as a sign that Borrell is carrying a message from the US.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov visited Tehran on Thursday and said his country sought the revival of the same JCPOA, no more nor less. Western diplomats in Tehran believe Moscow played a major role in obstructing the talks by demanding that Russia had to benefit economically from a revival of the nuclear deal. Iran denies Moscow sabotaged any agreement.

Borrell said that the world had changed since February when Russia invaded Ukraine.

“The world will be a much more secure place if we have a deal that can ensure for Iran full economic benefits of the agreement and at the same time to address the concerns of the international community about non-proliferation, global security and regional stability,” he said.

General Motors’ luxury brand looks to jump-start electric-vehicle push with high-end sedan produced in the hundreds a year

Cadillac plans to price a future electric sedan at around $300,000, according to people familiar with the matter, testing the cachet of General Motors Co.’s GM 5.55%▲ luxury brand.

GM is set to reveal later this summer a prototype of the car, named the Celestiq. The company has said the sedan will be Cadillac’s premier offering and custom-built at its engineering center near Detroit. It hasn’t disclosed pricing.

The auto maker intends to build fewer than 500 Celestiqs annually as a way to showcase its technology and generate buzz for Cadillac, the people said. Elements will include customized wood trim in the cabin and the latest version of GM’s hands-free assisted-driving system, called Ultra Cruise, they said.

The Celestiq price tag could run well beyond $300,000 depending on added features, and the car is scheduled to go into production by late 2023, the people said.

Cadillac is among a number of premium car brands that intend to fully transition their vehicle portfolios to electric at a faster pace than the broader industry. Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, Rolls-Royce, Cadillac and GM’s Buick all have said they plan to sell EVs exclusively by 2030.

Luxury car brands are better positioned to make the switch from internal-combustion models because they have more flexibility to set higher prices to offset the high cost of the large batteries needed to power EVs, analysts say.

GM has said Cadillac will lead the way in the auto maker’s transition to EVs, which includes plans to offer a few dozen electric models in North America across GM’s four brands by mid-decade, up from four today. GM has said it can quickly build scale in EVs by using a common system of battery cells, motors and other in-house components to underpin each new entry.

Cadillac, founded in 1902, recently began rolling out its first-ever electric model, the Lyriq, a midsize SUV that GM is building at a plant in Tennessee. The Celestiq is expected to be among several new Cadillac EVs in coming years.

The Celestiq price would put the car in a category of high-end sedans from luxury makers such as Rolls-Royce and Bentley. Cadillac has said the car will feature a low-slung profile, a glass roof and four-wheel steering for better maneuverability.

GM’s all-electric push for Cadillac is the latest revitalization effort for a brand that once dominated the luxury-car market.

For decades, Cadillac dueled with Ford’s Lincoln brand for status as the nation’s top-selling automotive luxury brand. Starting in the late 1990s, both were overtaken by German and Asian luxury names, including BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Lexus.

Cadillac’s U.S. market share has stabilized in recent years, at around 1% of the overall U.S. vehicle market, amid several efforts at an image reboot.

Cadillac has revamped its vehicle lineup away from large, cushy sedans to focus on sporty driving, a bid to better compete with the German luxury players. Since the early 2000s it has sold a line of racetrack-oriented cars, the Cadillac V-Series models.

Still, past efforts by Cadillac to burnish its image through so-called flagship vehicles have been mixed.

In 2016 it introduced the CT6, a large, powerful sedan, and phased it out in the U.S. four years later. In 2013, it launched a nearly $80,000 plug-in hybrid car, the ELR, but it also was discontinued amid weak sales.

Cadillac has had success with its Escalade SUV, which routinely sells for more than $100,000 and is popular among professional athletes and celebrities.

Scott Allen, owner of Crestview Cadillac, a dealership near Los Angeles, said he is hopeful the push into electrics will improve Cadillac’s image and boost sales. He said the Celestiq can help create interest in the brand even if the car is produced in small numbers.

“Cadillac needs that bling to show people, ‘This is what we can do,’” he said.