Prince Andrew advisor pitched Jeffrey Epstein on investing in EV startups like Lucid Motors The Epstein files reveal a “ghost” of a businessman. Sean O'Kane 1:23 PM PST · February 6, 2026 Electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors was scrambling to raise a Series D funding round in 2017. It had courted Ford as a potential investor, but Jia Yueting, the founder of rival EV startup Faraday Future, had quietly amassed around a 30% stake and was essentially blocking new investors.
David Stern, a mysterious businessman and close advisor to former Prince Andrew, saw an opportunity to break the logjam: bring in Jeffrey Epstein.
“Ford will likely be lead in $400m Series D in Lucid. Big strategic move,” Stern wrote to Epstein in emails released last week as part of the Department of Justice’s latest disclosure of 3 million documents related to Epstein. Jia “has massive cash issues” at Faraday, he wrote, and needs to “sell now to make payroll for his other business.”
It wasn’t the first EV startup Stern pitched Epstein, and it wouldn’t be the last, according to hundreds of documents reviewed by TechCrunch.
At the time, legacy automakers and newly minted startups, fueled by the breakthrough success of Tesla and progress by Google’s self-driving project, were jumping into electric and autonomous vehicles. And Stern was apparently hungry to take advantage of the resulting deal flow. The documents show he also pitched investments in Faraday Future and in another EV startup, Canoo.
It’s unlikely Epstein invested in any of them. Lucid didn’t close its Series D until late 2018, when it raised more than $1 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Faraday ultimately received a major investment from Chinese real estate conglomerate Evergrande in late 2017. Epstein said in a 2018 message included in the Justice Department’s files that he had no “direct” or “indirect” interest in Canoo.
These discussions instead provide greater insight into the many connections Epstein, a convicted sex offender, had to Silicon Valley startups up until his arrest and death in 2019. They also provide a snapshot of a relationship that has not been explored in previous reporting.
Techcrunch event TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026: Tickets Live On June 23 in Boston , more than 1,100 founders come together at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 for a full day focused on growth, execution, and real-world scaling. Learn from founders and investors who have shaped the industry. Connect with peers navigating similar growth stages. Walk away with tactics you can apply immediately Save up to $300 on your pass or save up to 30% with group tickets for teams of four or more. TechCrunch Founder Summit: Tickets Live On June 23 in Boston , more than 1,100 founders come together at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 for a full day focused on growth, execution, and real-world scaling. Learn from founders and investors who have shaped the industry. Connect with peers navigating similar growth stages. Walk away with tactics you can apply immediately Save up to $300 on your pass or save up to 30% with group tickets for teams of four or more. Boston, MA | June 23, 2026 REGISTER NOW By the time of the Lucid emails, Epstein and Stern had been working together closely for nearly a decade, the newly released documents show. To Epstein, Stern was “my china contact.” To Stern, Epstein was “my mentor, and I do what he tells me.”
Stern is a mostly digital ghost with little information available about him on the internet prior to the release of the files.
He is perhaps best known as the director of Prince Andrew’s Pitch@Palace startup contest, which ran for a few years until Andrew’s connections to Epstein were exposed. Andrew even referred to Stern as a “ghost” in one 2010 email .
Stern appears to have first approached Epstein in 2008, according to the emails released by the DOJ — just one month before the financier pled guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida. Stern was creating a fund, called AGC Capital, to take advantage of the economic boom in China, and he wanted Epstein to invest.
(It’s not clear how Stern was introduced to Epstein. Stern did not respond to a detailed list of questions for this article.)
Stern, who is German, attended the University of London and Shi-Da University in China in the late 1990s, and served as chairman of China Millennium Capital, the Chinese arm of Millennium Capital Partners, according to the bio section of the AGC Capital pitch deck , which is in the DOJ’s files.
Stern also worked for Siemens, negotiating “industrial Joint Ventures with Chinese State Owned enterprises,” before joining the Shanghai office of Deutsche Bank. He started a company called Asia Gateway in 2001 that “advised blue chip companies, Chinese enterprises as well as the Chinese government in growth strategies and investments.”
These jobs appear to have helped Stern make connections with powerful and wealthy Chinese businessmen, including Li Botan — the son-in-law of the fourth-most senior leader in China under Xi Jinping’s predecessor Hu Jintao. (Li would eventually go on to become a founding investor in Canoo with Stern.)
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