SPAC attack: Einride bets $1.35B that their SPAC will be different

Swedish electric and autonomous trucking group Einride has made progress on its plan to take the company’s stock public through a $1.35 billion SPAC deal with Legato Merger Corp. III following a $113 million oversubscribed capital raise.

Einride announced this week that it had secured $113 million in oversubscribed financing to support its proposed merger with Legato Merger Corp. III, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Once completed, the move would take the Swedish autonomous freight firm’s stock public at $1.35 billion valuation.

A SPAC deal is a transaction in which a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC), which is effectively a publicly-traded shell corporation that’s formed solely to raise capital, merges with an operating company to bring it into a public trading market. It’s a process that was popular in the heady, “draw a truck, make a billion dollars” era that saw recently pardoned criminal and alleged sex offender Trevor Milton launch the now-defunct hydrogen truck brand Nikola, and one that offers a faster and sometimes more flexible (read: less regulated) alternative to a traditional Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Sharp-eyed readers will note that $1.35B is down significantly from earlier projections putting Einride’s value at something closer to $1.8 billion, which reflects either a cooler global outlook on electrification (unlikely), a more sober take on the real-world capabilities of self-driving vehicles (maybe), or the fact that just about all the SPAC deals featuring an EV startup from the last decade has gone down in flames, taking billions of investor dollars down with them (that’s the one).

Despite the reduced valuation, Einride executives are calling this a win. “This PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity) reflects strong investor confidence in Einride’s mission to transform global freight through autonomous and electric technology,” explains Roozbeh Charli, Chief Executive of Einride. “With this additional capital, we believe we are well positioned to scale our commercial deployments of electric and autonomous freight solutions with both existing and new customers, while continuing to invest in our automated driving system and intelligent freight platform.”

Einride’s official copy believes that their SPAC will be different, because those other EV startups were using SPAC money to fund expensive R&D and EV manufacturing programs, while Einride is positioning itself primarily as a digital freight and logistics platform that deploys electric trucks, which are being sourced from partners like PACCAR Kenworth and Peterbilt.

“Our proprietary technology stack, purpose built for autonomous operations, combined with our vessel-agnostic approach, provides significant competitive advantages,” comments Henrik Green, CTO of Einride. “With our demonstrated safety record and established ability to operate autonomous vehicles commercially, we are well-positioned to capture the significant market opportunity as the industry transitions to electric and autonomous freight.”

We spoke with Einride’s Sean Ackley last August on Electrek’s Quick Charge podcast, even before the company’s L4 capable autonomous electric semi trucks had hit the road – and, to his credit, he is extremely bullish on Einride’s future.

You can check out the episode for yourself, below, then let us know what you think of Einride’s latest financial moves in the comments.

Quick Charge interview with Einride

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