Slate raised at least $111 million in Series A financing, including an undisclosed amount from Bezos. Slate then raised $600 million in 2024 from Mark Walter, the controlling owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and CEO of Guggenheim Partners, Jeff Bezos, and General Catalyst, a venture capital firm.[5] In mid-2026, the company said it had completed a $650m series C investment round, which took its total capital raised to $1.4bn.[6]

source

And if that is still not enough for you, here is an article that explains in details how this is all an Amazon initiative

https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/08/inside-the-ev-startup-secretly-backed-by-jeff-bezos/

When was the last time you bought a new car that didn't come standard with speakers? I'm also cautiously interested in this thing, but a lot of basic functionality doesn't come standard and hasn't had a price announced, and with vehicles like the maverick ev around the corner Slate could end up not being the cheap option after all for all but the most spartan builds

Nope. Regular cars (EVs included) cost MSRP + destination fees. They don’t come out barebones without basic conveniences that you have to pay for to add on. This is not how it commonly works.

I didn’t say it was a bad thing, you just assumed that. I was just pointing out the stuff that isn’t included in the headline.