Venture investor Chamath Palihapitiya, dubbed Wall Street's "SPAC king" for his high-profile blank-check deals, is set to take his latest special purpose acquisition vehicle public, marking his return to the market after several years.
American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corp, chaired by Palihapitiya, will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker 'AEXA', a filing showed late on Monday. The SPAC plans to raise $250 million to target companies in artificial intelligence, energy, decentralized finance and defense sectors.
A SPAC is a shell firm that raises money through an IPO to merge with a private business and take it public, offering companies an alternative route to the market that bypasses the longer and more costly traditional IPO process.
SPAC deals hit record levels in 2020 and 2021, before activity slowed sharply in the following years as regulatory scrutiny increased and investors soured on the once-popular vehicle.
During the peak, several Wall Street heavyweights, including billionaire investors Bill Ackman and Michael Klein, joined Palihapitiya in betting on SPACs as the next big trend in the listings market.
Despite backing from big-name investors, many SPACs failed to secure merger targets, while others completed deals with heavy redemptions or saw their shares plunge after debut.
But Palihapitiya strongly believes in the vehicle. "When I raised my first SPAC in 2017, I wanted to help correct an increasingly unstable balance between the private and public markets," he said in a letter to investors.
"While SPACs are not the solution for every issue in the IPO process, I continue to believe that they have an important piece to play in capital formation - and especially now."
SoFi Technologies (SOFI.O) is among Palihapitiya's most successful bets, with the consumer lender now valued at nearly $29 billion. In January 2021, it had agreed to go public in a blank-check deal valued at around $8.65 billion.
