Volta Trucks

EV trucksSweden

New to Unitard

💀 Dead / Bankrupt

Peak $1 BillionToday

~-100%

from peak

🦄
Became a unicorn
~2022
📈
Peak valuation
$1 Billion ’22
💔
Became a Unitard
Oct 2023
💸
Last valuation
Wiped out

Capital raised

$390M

Total raised

$249K/day

Raised per day

Total raised averaged per day over approximately 4.3 years from founding to bankruptcy or shutdown. This is not measured cash burn. Methodology

Funding: Wikipedia/Reuters

Current status

Bankrupt Oct 2023

The rise & fall

6 moments · 2019–2023

The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.

2019

Founded to electrify the delivery truck

A Swedish-founded startup building the Volta Zero, an all-electric truck designed for city deliveries.

Wikipedia

2022

The peak: ~$1B on the Volta Zero$1B

About $390M raised to put the Zero on city streets carries the pre-revenue truck maker to an estimated ~$1B.

Reuters

Aug 2023

Battery supplier Proterra goes bankrupt

Volta's key battery supplier files Chapter 11, choking Zero production just as new funding gets scarce.

Reuters

2023

From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2023

Glassdoor reviews captured the whiplash — pay raises to restructuring to collapse within weeks, roughly 600 employees let go with essentially no notice or notice pay, two months before Christmas. Many reviewers blamed investor money spent on travel, gifts and management parties.

Oct 2023

Insolvency — joins the Unitard Club 💔

Weeks after Proterra's collapse, and unable to secure further funding, Volta files for insolvency.

Canary Media

$1Bof peak value erased · 4 years

💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.

How it happened

Volta Trucks was a Swedish-founded startup developing the all-electric Volta Zero urban delivery truck, reaching an estimated ~$1B valuation around 2022. Hit by the bankruptcy of a key battery supplier (Proterra) and unable to secure further funding, it filed for insolvency in October 2023.

Source: Canary Media

Where they went

Essa Al-Saleh
CEO (at bankruptcy)
CEO at Agitero AG
LinkedIn ↗

Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-19. See our methodology.

Disclosed investors (5)

Historical funding participation; lists may be incomplete and do not establish current ownership or investor losses.

* Lead in a funding round · Crunchbase ↗ · 2026-10-13 · Methodology · Leaderboard