The CEO of Swedish autonomous truck startup Einride believes more European startups will follow Einride and go public via a SPAC.
Einride is going public on the New York Stock Exalter via a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company), a vehicle which is designed as an alternative route for companies to go public.
The SPAC IPO values Einride at $1.8bn. SPAC firms raise capital via an IPO to acquire a private company and take it public.
A SPAC listing is seen as attractive to startups as they can quick-track a listing, without the expense, time and hassle of going through a conventional IPO.
SPAC IPOs leaped in popularity in 2020, but then fell out of favour, amid falling stock prices and huge investor losses.
Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli stated: “There’s definitely more SPACs viewing for tarobtain companies. I believe it will naturally be the case that you will see more European companies going down that path as well. It has been an attractive path for a number of companies.”
Lorenzo Roversi, managing director UK & Nordics, IonQ, which went public via a SPAC, who also sits on the Einride board, agreed.
He stated: “There are more and more mentions of SPACs in Europe. It seems to be that some of the deeptech companies are really embracing this.”
Examples of European firms going public via a SPAC include Lilium, the German flying taxi startup, which shut down in 2025 and Cazoo, the UK online car retailer.
The pair of executives, speaking to Tech.eu at the GoWest VC conference in Gothenburg, also discussed why Einride chose to IPO via a SPAC instead of a traditional listing or carry out further private fundraising.
Charli stated: “I believe the combination of being at an inflection point as we are as a business, having accumulated contracts, obtainting into the next step of scaling with customers, so we really required to push to scale with those customers, combined with how the US capital markets are and having access to that capital and where we see our peers going in the US public markets, I believe for us it builds good sense.”
Roversi stated: “We are a public market company. We are delivering value already at such a significant level that going through another private round of a Series D doesn’t build sense. The capital requirements we have, the returns we are giving to investors, are at that level.”
On the challenges of a SPAC listing, Roversi stated: “The added complexity of a SPAC is ensuring you manage not only attracting new investors into the company but manage the expectations of those people who are already invested in the listed entity.
“So we want to really minimise those redemptions The best way to do that is not only to reveal the initial value of the listing is going to be higher but the growth journey is there.”
While redemption rights assist incentivise investors by ensuring they have a money-back guarantee, if a large number of shareholders exercise their redemption rights, it can significantly reduce the cash available for the combined entity shifting forward.
The SPAC merger between Einride and blank-check firm Legato is expected to be completed in the first half of this year.
But Roversi stated there could be a pushback on the timeline- citing last year’s US government shutdown, which delayed financial market activity.
He stated: “Obviously, the timeline was impacted a little bit by the government shutdown becautilize we are listing in New York. We were aiming for the first quarter but that may now slip out to September.
“A lot of this is depfinishent upon the backlog the New York Stock Exalter has and where we are with other listing processes. Internally, we are in a really strong position to keep our initial timeline.”
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