Is the SPAC comeback a good thing?

If there’s one thing Wall Street loves more than ditching the Manhattan heat for the Hamptons, it’s coming up with new, shiny ways to market questionable investment ideas. And in the case of the latest SPAC renaissance, it’s not even a new idea—it’s just questionable.

SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, are shell companies that are created just to acquire or merge with an existing company, allowing that company to enter public markets without going through an IPO. The catch, however, is the SPAC sponsors have a small window of time—usually within two years—to find a suitable company to acquire.

If that sounds like a bit of a shaky plan, that’s because it is. SPACs boomed back in the post-pandemic heyday, accounting for over half of all new publicly traded companies in 2020. If you needed more evidence the phenomenon was a fad, the SPAC explosion attracted investments from celebrities like Channing Tatum and Stephen Curry.

But after the market began to turn, the vast majority of SPACs flamed out. In 2023 alone, SPACs accounted for 21 bankruptcies, resulting in the loss of $46 billion in investor value, according to Fortune.

The SPAC rebrand

Now, big investors are ushering in another SPAC wave. Just yesterday, Anthony Pompliano announced a new crypto venture that raised $750 million and went public via SPAC. Last week, “SPAC King” and generally unavoidable presence on the internet Chamath Palihapitiya posted a poll on X asking if he should get back into SPACs, after launching a series of failed ventures a few years ago (71.3% of respondents said “no”).

In perhaps the most tangible evidence of the SPAC comeback yet, Goldman Sachs has decided to start underwriting SPACs again, after a three-year hiatus from the deals, Bloomberg reported last week.

Part of what’s powered the new SPAC boom has been the slowing of the IPO pipeline, pushing companies that want to hit the public market to find a backdoor. SPAC IPOs have raised $11.2 billion in 2025 thus far, dramatically outpacing the $1.8 billion raised over the same period last year, according to Bloomberg data.

Will the latest SPAC bubble be any different from the last one? The SEC reformed its guidelines for SPACs in 2024, tightening regulations and clamping down on conflicts of interest.

Hopefully Channing Tatum is liquid enough to get back in the SPAC game.—LB