Going public through a special purpose acquisition company is officially mainstream. Special-purpose acquisition companies, once scorned by Wall Street guys as a less respectable way to go public, have been forming and going public at an unprecedented rate this year.
While last year was considered a record year for SSICOS, this year it has already broken the 2020 record.
And in the last year, the companies that go public are no longer the guys under the radar. Well-capitalized companies with brand recognition, such as genetic testing company 23AndMe and online real estate buying platform Opendoor, are among the companies that have gone public or have announced their intention to go public through a SPAC.
Here at Crunchbase News, we keep a list of the companies that have gone public this year. In the past, it has been made up mostly of IPOs, although there have been direct listings here and there. This year, we started tracking SSICOS that completed their mergers and started operating.
With SPACs forming and going public every day, it seemed prudent to keep track of the companies that had announced that they were also agreeing to go public through SPAC: SPAC’s announced goals, if you will. Therefore, we reviewed news reports and press releases and compiled a list of venture capital-backed companies that have announced that they will be merging with a SPAC. Companies reported to be in talks to go public through SPAC are not included in the list.
