Anthony Edwards, Kyler Murray, and Bryce Young took equity positions in Karma Automotive, the Irvine-based ultra-luxury EV manufacturer whose flagship Revero GT starts at $300,000. The investment, disclosed Monday, places three franchise quarterbacks and a rising NBA All-Star on the cap table of a company that sold fewer than 500 units last year but carries a cultish reputation among wealth managers and early Tesla depositors who wanted something rarer.
Karma declined to specify check size or valuation. The structure appears to be a friends-and-family extension tied to the company's planned 2025 product refresh and a rumored Series C raise later this year. Edwards is 23, Murray 27, Young 23—all early in max-contract windows, all three represented by agencies with established automotive desks. The announcement carried no corresponding endorsement language, no kit rights, no social obligations. Equity only.
The move continues a pattern. Athletes with eight-figure annual incomes are realizing that driving a Bentley for free costs them the chance to own a piece of the company that made it. Naomi Osaka owns a skincare line. Serena Williams sits on Poshmark's board. Kevin Durant's Thirty Five Ventures has 90-plus portfolio companies. The shift is generational and structural: representation shops now staff former Blackstone associates who walk clients through pre-money valuations and liquidation preferences, not just appearance fees. Karma represents the aesthetic endpoint of that shift—low volume, high ASP, zero mass-market ambitions, exactly the kind of private placement that looks good in a family office deck and requires no stadium activation.
Karma's business is fragile by design. The company assembles vehicles by hand in Southern California, sources powertrains from partnerships, and sells through a 15-dealer U.S. network that functions more like art galleries. It emerged from the Fisker Automotive bankruptcy in 2014, acquired by Chinese auto-parts conglomerate Wanxiang Group for roughly $150 million, and has cycled through three CEOs since. Current leadership, installed in 2022, is a former Lotus executive betting that ultra-high-net-worth buyers will pay six figures for an EV that is not a Lucid, not a Taycan, and definitively not a Tesla. The athlete capital suggests he is not wrong.
The three investors span two leagues but share a profile: franchise faces with max deals and growing discomfort with transactional brand work. Edwards signed a five-year, $244 million extension with Minnesota last summer. Murray is four years into a five-year, $230.5 million deal with Arizona. Young is on a rookie contract but already the face of the Carolina Panthers rebuild, carrying $37.9 million in fully guaranteed money. All three have spent the past 18 months visibly pulling back from traditional endorsements. Edwards dropped a regional auto dealership deal in Q4 2023. Murray restructured his Bose contract to remove appearance minimums. Young's agent declined three seven-figure kit deals during his rookie year, preferring to bank leverage.
Karma's pitch to athletes is not performance—it is rarity. The Revero GT produces 536 horsepower, does zero-to-sixty in 3.8 seconds, and seats four in semi-aniline leather that smells like a private terminal. It is slower than a Plaid, less refined than a Taycan Turbo S, and costs more than both. But it is also invisible. Fewer than 2,000 Karmas have been delivered since the relaunch. The ownership experience is a concierge text thread and a flatbed trailer when something breaks. The brand's value proposition is that no one else at the facility will have one.
The timing matters. Karma is preparing a 2025 model-year refresh that includes a rumored SUV platform and an alleged partnership with an Italian coachbuilder whose name the company will not confirm. The athlete capital likely flows into that pipeline, providing working capital for tooling and homologation while giving the company social proof it cannot buy. Edwards has 12.1 million Instagram followers. Murray has 2.8 million. Young has 1.6 million. Karma does not advertise.
The structure also signals maturation in athlete deal-making. Early-stage equity used to mean Vitaminwater in 2007 or Beats in 2008—lottery tickets that paid when Coke or Apple wrote the check. Modern athlete investors want board seats, quarterly calls, and preferred liquidation. They want to understand EBITDA multiples and margin compression. Karma, with its tiny unit count and its reliance on Wanxiang's balance sheet, is not a liquidity event waiting to happen. It is a long hold in a category where brand value accretes slowly and exits are rare. The athletes betting on it are thinking in decades, not deal cycles.
Watch for follow-on capital in Q3 2025 when Karma's rumored Series C opens. The athlete tranche likely carries pro-rata rights, meaning Edwards, Murray, and Young will get first look at the next round. Also watch the dealer network: Karma needs 25-30 stores to justify the SUV tooling spend, and expansion requires local capital. Meanwhile, expect at least two more athlete announcements before year-end—Karma's investor deck reportedly includes six-to-eight additional professional players who have signed but not yet disclosed. The company is building a cap table that looks like an All-Star ballot, one max contract at a time.
The takeaway
Athletes are swapping endorsement fees for equity in a **$300K** EV brand with zero advertising and **500 annual units**—the cap table is the campaign.
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