Pretty much everyone has just quit Damon Motorcycles, the startup electric motorcycle company behind the Hypersport, a 200 MPH, 200-mile range, 200-horsepower superbike that never even made it out of the prototype phase. And this truly feels like the end of this saga, as the board, the company's CFO, and its returning co-founder who became CEO, have all left.
RIP, Damon Motorcycles?
The reporting comes after an insane last two years, one that RideApart has been at the forefront of. There were mass layoffs that never went public, lawsuits back and forth between the company and its co-founder, Jay Giraud, allegations of inappropriate work behavior and dog attacks, a cancelled, highly publicized factory, and repeated changes to production timetables. There was also a shady investor with ties to IndyCar and an FCC case.
Then, Giraud was ousted, co-founder Dominque Kwong returned as CEO, and news of the company moving forward was back in the press. There was also another prototype motorcycle, its second or third, in the process of being built. And I even spoke with Kwong about everything and the future of the company a few months back, but I haven't released that talk for various reasons. The company, however, was down to just 13 employees from a height of around 200. It was hard to see a path forward, to be honest, but they thought they could.
Now, that is seemingly out the door.
According to Betakit, which first broke the news, along with subsequent press releases dropped by Damon Motorcycles itself, CEO Dominque Kwong, CFO Bal Bhullar, and Board Member Karan Sodhi, have all left the company. Bhullar was apparently the first to leave early last month, followed by Kwong and Sodhi. As for who's left, that's unclear. According to Damon's site, there's currently no Board of Directors, and the only two employees listed are Rob Chartier, who's VP of Cloud and Information Systems, and Kurt Risic, who's VP of Vehicle Dynamics & Integration, Bay Area General Manager. Risic's LinkedIn profile remains active and states he still works at Damon, though I couldn't locate Chartier's.
In the release about Bhullar's exit, outgoing CEO Kwong stated that she would be replaced by Dino Mariutti as Interim CFO. Mariutti had been part of the Damon team going back to 2017 as the company's Head of EU relations, and was part of the board briefly from 2020 to 2021. He left the company in 2024, but has seemingly returned as CFO. Kwong, however, has already updated his LinkedIn to state he's out as of February 2026.
So where does this all leave us? Well, both co-founders have split. The engineering team that was responsible for those early prototypes are gone. There's no manufacturing center to build a motorcycle. Of the 13 people who were still employed by the company as of last year, at least three more are gone. Investment in the company has dried up completely. And a lot of deposits are...somewhere. When I last spoke with then-CMO Amber Spencer, she told me that those deposits were fully refundable. How that'll occur is anyone's guess.
But after years of will-they, won't-they, this truly does feel like the final nail in the Damon Motorcycles coffin.
