SPACs are going to rule the world, or at least, Chamath’s future portfolio.
Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder of Social Capital, has already tripled down on SPACs, the so-called “blank check” vehicle that takes private companies and flips them onto the public markets. His first SPAC bought Virgin Galactic last year, and his second SPAC bought Opendoor this week in a blockbuster deal valuing the instant home sale platform at $4.8 billion, less cash. His third SPAC officially fundraised in April, and has yet to announce a deal.
Now, it looks like he’s going to double down on his triple down. After the bell rung on Wall Street this Friday, the venture capitalist filed three new SPAC vehicles with the SEC. Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. IV has a headline value of $350 million, Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. V has a headline value of $650 million and Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. VI has a headline value of $1 billion.
Those headline values are targets: each SPAC will need to go through an investor roadshow process and officially raise capital before they can begin trying to find an acquisition target. Each SPAC is independent, and may share investors or have entirely independent investors around the table.
The three new SPACs share similar managers: Palihapitiya himself; Ian Osborne, who manages Hedosophia; Steven Trieu, the CFO of Social Capital; and Simon Williams, the chief administration officer of Hedosophia.
However, each has a different fifth director, who perhaps sheds some light on how each SPAC differs in strategy. Nirav Tolia, a co-founder and CEO of popular social network Nextdoor, is joining the fourth SPAC. Jay Parikh, a former head of engineering at Facebook, who left earlier this year, is joining the fifth SPAC. And finally, Dick Costolo, the former CEO of Twitter and current venture capitalist, is joining the sixth SPAC.
We’ve been talking about the accelerating pace of SPACs this year, and that appears in microcosm here around these Social Capital vehicles. It seems as though Palihapitiya and Hedosophia not only have great ambitions for these vehicles, but are increasingly mechanizing the process of fundraising them and taking advantage of markets that seem excited for any avenue toward growth.
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