Nikola

How it happened

Nikola, an electric and hydrogen truck startup, briefly surpassed Ford's market value at a ~$30B peak after its June 2020 SPAC listing. A short-seller report and fraud allegations against founder Trevor Milton — convicted in 2022, later pardoned in 2025 — undercut its claims. Employees called the ending years early: Glassdoor reviews flagged money running out as far back as February 2023, and described a repeating cycle of hiring sprees followed by unannounced mass layoffs, revolving-door CEOs and strategy reversals, and pressure to publish performance claims engineers said weren't fully vetted. Nikola filed for Chapter 11 in February 2025 and moved into liquidation effective December 2025.

Employee accounts paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗. See our methodology.