Russian Tesla-killer Atom runs out of cash as Kama freezes salaries

The troubles at the Russian electric vehicle developer Kama surfaced when employees began filing official complaints through the T1 Cloud union. By late June 2026, salary delays had spread to the entire workforce, leaving over 1,200 specialists working purely for the glory of the domestic automotive industry.

Management initially promised to clear the debts after an internal corporate presentation, but the cash flow remained as phantom as the car itself. Instead of real money, laid-off workers are reportedly receiving "guarantee letters" promising payments at some unspecified point in the future. The venture, originally founded by Kamaz CEO Sergey Kogogin and businessman Ruben Vardanyan, also attracted major backers including a subsidiary of the state nuclear giant Rosatom.

While the company's internal HR blamed the crisis on a cash gap caused by delayed loan tranches from Promsvyazbank, the bank itself quickly debunked this excuse. Promsvyazbank representatives confirmed that all syndicated loans, co-financed with VEB.RF to the tune of 24 billion rubles, were fully transferred by March 2026.

The financial bleeding is reflected in the official reports, with Kama posting a net loss of 3.15 billion rubles in 2025, while its short-term liabilities skyrocketed to nearly 30 billion. Despite the financial collapse, the company managed to smash two pre-production prototypes of the Atom electric car in official crash tests at the NAMI testing ground.

It is truly a marvel of modern business management to run out of money right before launching a product that was supposed to save the local industry. Watching a heavily subsidized state project crash-test its cars while its staff tests the limits of human survival without wages is the ultimate peak of this tech-adventure.