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Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, or SPACs, have exploded on the financial markets over the last year or so, raising more than $100 billion so far in 2021 and already topping last year’s $82.1 billion total. Also known as a “blank check company,” SPACs are shell corporations listed on a stock exchange with the purpose of acquiring a private company, thus making it public without going through the traditional initial public offering process.
Though SPACs have been around since the 1990s, the capital raised last year alone by way of this strategy exceeded the amount raised in the entire previous history of these companies, with more than 130 SPACs going public so far in 2021. SPACs traditionally existed as a last resort for companies that would otherwise have had difficulties raising money on the open market. An example of this is WeWork, a provider of flexible shared workspaces and services for technology startups that plans to go public through a merger with a SPAC this year after a failed 2019 IPO.