Porsche Is Selling Its Bugatti Rimac Stake , and the Reason Why Tells You Everything
The deal announced April 24 is less about Bugatti’s future than it is about Porsche’s survival.
On April 24, Porsche confirmed it is selling its 45% stake in Bugatti Rimac to a consortium led by US-based HOF Capital. The announcement was clean, controlled, and framed as a strategic pivot. What it actually represents is a company in the middle of a financial reckoning, making hard calls about what it can and cannot afford to carry.
The Bugatti Rimac joint venture was formed in 2021, when Porsche and Croatia’s Rimac Group combined forces around one of the most storied names in automotive history. The result was a structure that housed Bugatti’s French operations and held a 20.6% stake in Rimac Group itself. On paper, it looked like exactly the kind of forward-thinking bet a prestige automaker should make. For a few years, it was easy to defend.
Then Porsche’s numbers fell apart.
Operating profit at Porsche dropped 93% year-on-year, with margins collapsing to 1.1% against 14.1% the prior year. Those are not rounding errors. That is a structural problem requiring structural answers.
New CEO Leiters, who took the helm at the start of this year following Oliver Blume’s tenure, has been direct about the mandate. Cost cuts. Capital discipline. A return to what Porsche actually is, rather than what it was trying to become. In the joint statement accompanying the sale, Leiters put it plainly: “In setting up the joint venture Bugatti Rimac together with Rimac Group, we successfully laid the foundation for Bugatti’s future.” Then, the pivot: “Now, with the sale of our stake, we are focusing Porsche on the core business.”
That second sentence is doing a lot of work.
It signals that everything outside the Stuttgart core, everything that cannot be directly tied to the 911, the Cayenne, the Taycan, is now on the table for review. Bugatti Rimac was an elegant partnership, but it is not a Porsche product. And right now, Porsche needs to think like a Porsche company again.
Who Is Buying In
HOF Capital is leading the consortium. The firm was co-founded by Onsi Sawiris, of the Egyptian Sawiris business dynasty, and operates across private equity and venture. Alongside HOF Capital is BlueFive Capital, a firm with $15 billion in assets under management that launched in November 2024. BlueFive is buying into Bugatti Rimac specifically, not into Rimac Group at large, a distinction worth holding onto.
Financial terms were not disclosed. An unnamed source close to the deal placed the valuation of Bugatti Rimac at over $1 billion, though that figure remains unconfirmed and should be treated accordingly.
Once the transaction closes, pending the usual regulatory approvals and conditions that could still shift the timeline, Rimac Group is expected to take effective control of Bugatti Rimac. Mate Rimac, who built his company from a converted BMW in Zagreb into one of the most technically credible electric hypercar ventures in the world, would then hold the keys to Bugatti outright. That is a meaningful outcome, separate from anything Porsche does next.
What This Means for Bugatti
Here is where the article gets speculative, and where it is worth being careful. Nothing announced on April 24 clarifies what happens to Bugatti’s product roadmap under new ownership. The Tourbillon, Bugatti’s hybrid successor to the Chiron, was already in motion before this deal surfaced. Whether the capital structure around it changes, whether timelines shift, whether HOF Capital’s involvement brings any strategic direction beyond financial return, none of that has been made public.
What is clear is that Bugatti now has a more focused owner in Rimac, and a set of consortium investors whose entry point is a billion-dollar-plus valuation.
That suggests confidence in the brand’s commercial durability, even if the specifics remain opaque.
The Bigger Read on Porsche
Porsche’s profit slump did not happen in isolation. The broader German automotive sector has been navigating a painful transition, one involving softening EV demand in key markets, rising production costs, and competitive pressure from Chinese manufacturers that the industry underestimated for too long. Porsche, which had been one of the most profitable automakers in the world by margin, was not immune.
The Bugatti Rimac stake sale is, in that context, less about Bugatti and more about Porsche buying itself room to maneuver. Freeing capital from a non-core minority position, at a valuation that reportedly clears $1 billion, is the kind of move a new CEO makes when he needs to show the board and the market that the house is being put in order.
Leiters is moving quickly. Whether the moves are sufficient depends on how the core business performs through the rest of the year.
Bugatti Rimac continues. Rimac Group gets closer to full ownership of a French icon. And Porsche, for the first time in years, has a reason to look inward instead of out.
That might be exactly what it needs right now.
