Tag Archives: Entrepreneurs/Startups

Business

Several Top Rivian Executives Depart the Electric-Vehicle Startup

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Several top executives at

Rivian Automotive Inc.,

RIVN -1.02%

including the vice president overseeing body engineering and its head of supply chain, have left the EV startup in recent months, as the company exits a year in which it fell short of its production targets.

The departures, confirmed by a Rivian spokeswoman, are the latest developments in what has been a challenging period for Rivian, which has been rolling out its first all-electric models but last year missed a critical milestone of manufacturing 25,000 vehicles. The company said it was off its goal by about 700 vehicles in part because of difficulty getting parts. 

Rivian’s stock has also tumbled since its blockbuster initial public offering in November 2021, down roughly 79% through Tuesday’s close. 

The executives who have left were some of Rivian’s longer-tenured employees. Among them is Randy Frank, vice president of body and interior engineering, and Steve Gawronski, the vice president in charge of parts purchasing. Both had departed around the beginning of this year. 

Mr. Frank joined Rivian in 2019 from

Ford Motor Co.

Mr. Gawronski joined in 2018 from the autonomous vehicle startup Zoox.

Another early employee, Patrick Hunt, a senior director in the strategy team, left the company late last year. Mr. Hunt joined Rivian in 2015.

Rivian’s general counsel, Neil Sitron, departed in September after 4½ years with the company, which was founded in 2009.

The Rivian spokeswoman said the company wants to ensure the startup has the talent and staff it needs to ramp up production. The company declined to comment on the individual circumstances of the departures. Efforts to reach the former employees weren’t immediately successful.

“We continue to attract world class talent to our company as our business needs change,” she said.

The departures mark the latest shake-up at the top of Rivian, which has brought in new executives to oversee the company’s manufacturing operations. The company’s first full year of factory production was marred by supply-chain troubles and difficulties getting the assembly line to run at full speed.

Tim Fallon, former head of

Nissan Motor Co.

’s factory in Canton, Miss., was hired in early 2022 to run Rivian’s sole factory in Normal, Ill.

In June, Rivian hired Frank Klein as chief operating officer, from contract manufacturer

Magna Steyr.

In a November email to employees reviewed by the Journal, Mr. Klein wrote that with Mr. Gawronski’s exit, the company was taking the opportunity to make some organizational changes to ensure it can support the increased complexity that the group will handle in coming years.

Mr. Klein added Rivian was reorganizing its supply-chain management, putting one vice president in charge of the supply chain and logistics, and another in charge of parts procurement.

He also announced that Rivian had hired Andreas Reutter from tool maker

Stanley Black & Decker Inc.

to oversee Rivian’s supply-chain logistics.

The changes at the top of Rivian come as it attempts to transform from an upstart looking to raise capital to a mass manufacturer with ambitions to become one of the world’s largest auto makers.

Rivian is under pressure to prove it can build its electric trucks at scale without having ramped up production before, as competition heats up from legacy auto makers. WSJ toured Rivian’s and Ford’s EV factories to see how they are pushing to meet demand. Illustration: Adam Falk/The Wall Street Journal

Its first all-electric models, the R1T pickup truck and R1S sport-utility vehicle, are relatively new. The company has only been building cars at its Illinois factory since late 2021. Before then, it had never built or sold a single vehicle for retail. 

As part of its expansion, Rivian went on a hiring spree, growing rapidly from about 1,200 workers in 2019 to around 14,000 employees by the summer of last year and has only recently begun creating positions that exist at many companies.

In April, Anisa Kamadoli Costa was hired as chief sustainability officer from jewelry maker Tiffany Inc. In October, Rivian hired a former Capital One Financial Corp. executive, Diane Lye, as its first chief information officer.

As Rivian has struggled to increase factory output, it has come under pressure to trim spending. Last summer, the company laid off around 6% of its workforce and cut spending on many of its programs. 

The company became focused on bringing production of its current set of vehicles up to speed. It also makes an electric delivery van that it sells to Amazon.com Inc. 

In an example of the young car maker’s shifting priorities, Rivian suspended negotiations with Mercedes-Benz AG over a proposed van partnership in Europe, which had been an expansion target for Chief Executive RJ Scaringe. Rivian said the decision came after re-evaluating its opportunities for growth.

The company reported a net loss of $5 billion for the first nine months of 2022, and its cash pile fell to $13.8 billion at the end of September, down from $15.46 billion in June. Rivian is scheduled to report its full-year results on Feb. 28.

Write to Sean McLain at sean.mclain@wsj.com and Nora Eckert at nora.eckert@wsj.com

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Business

Crypto Entrepreneurs Fail to Capture Elon Musk’s Attention With $600,000 Goat Statue

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AUSTIN, Texas—Even as a cold night started to settle outside

Tesla

‘s headquarters here on Saturday, a group of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs had no plans to leave until

Elon Musk,

the man they named their currency after, accepted a 12,000-pound sculpture of a Mr. Musk-headed goat riding a rocket.

It is the latest stunt in the cryptocurrency space, where jokes and memes about digital currencies regularly flood social media. But a 6-ton sculpture as a marketing gimmick isn’t so common.

The creators of Elon GOAT say the name of their cryptocurrency was inspired by their respect for Mr. Musk. They and his other fans think he is the “greatest of all time,” or a “GOAT.” They took the admiration literally, spending $600,000 to create a sculpture of Mr. Musk’s head, wearing a gold-plated dogecoin necklace on a goat’s body. The rocket can move, pointing to the sky as if it is taking off. Gas lines run through it so that flames can shoot out of the back.

They trucked it to

Tesla Inc.’s

headquarters, in hopes Mr. Musk would accept the gift. The creators are calling called the event “GOATSgiving.”

Elon Musk has warned of dire financial challenges facing Twitter, the social-media company he took over for $44 billion in October. WSJ’s Mark Maurer explains how the company is trying to fix its finances and avoid a potential bankruptcy. Photo Illustration: Laura Kammermann

But about two hours after the co-founders of Elon GOAT parked the sculpture right outside the Tesla building, there was no sign of Mr. Musk.

Dustin Dailey, a security officer at Tesla, walked over to a group of about 15 people and said they couldn’t accept the sculpture on Mr. Musk’s behalf, but would find a spot for it on their property if Mr. Musk gave the thumbs-up.

But so far Mr. Musk hasn’t given any indication he would accept it or whether he knew the sculpture was there. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment

“I am fairly certain he does know about it,” said Mr. Dailey of the sculpture. “It’s all over Twitter.”

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you think of the Elon Musk goat sculpture? Join the conversation below. 

Alec Wolvert, an Elon GOAT co-founder and chief marketing officer, said they were planning on camping out on a piece of public land off a toll road that overlooks the headquarters until Mr. Musk accepted the sculpture.

“We’re gonna stay here as long as possible,” Mr. Wolvert said. “I even heard some people say they were going to strap themselves to it.”

The idea of the sculpture came together last year. “It was an evening joke that kind of just came to fruition,” said

Ashley Sansalone,

an Elon GOAT co-founder.

Metal sculptor Kevin Stone spent nearly six months working on the sculpture of Elon Musk.



Photo:

Kevin Stone

The cryptocurrency entrepreneurs asked Kevin Stone, a metal sculptor in British Columbia, Canada, to make the giant sculpture with Mr. Musk’s head. The goal: to get Mr. Musk to tweet about the sculpture to his more than 118 million followers and draw attention to their cryptocurrency, the Elon GOAT.

“Elon tweeting us would legitimize the token,” said Mr. Sansalone, 40 years old.

Mr. Sansalone said he works on the token full time and previously ran a construction company and traded energy. Unlike bitcoin, ether or dogecoin, the Elon GOAT token is far from a household cryptocurrency name. It is ranked well outside the largest cryptocurrencies by market value, according to CoinMarketCap.

Mr. Musk’s head, which took nearly six months to complete was made by Mr. Stone. The goat body and rocket were made by others in Phoenix to speed up the project, Mr. Sansalone said. Then all the pieces were put together and attached to the back of a 70-foot long semi-truck trailer.

“When I first saw the statue my jaw dropped,” said DeMarco Hill, 51, who spotted it in September in Goodyear, Ariz., where he lives. He grabbed his 12-year-old son and they followed it. “It was something you’ve never seen before in your life.”

Mr. Hill, a trucker who owns his own company, Stay Ready Trucking, thought the stunt was so entertaining that he found Mr. Sansalone and asked if he could participate. Mr. Sansalone said Mr. Hill was needed because only someone with a special license could drive around the heaping pile of metal.

He has since driven the sculpture through California, Arizona and Washington, before bringing it to Texas. People who drive by honk their horns or give a thumbs-up, Mr. Hill said. 

“If I pull up to the side of the road it’s like people crowding around,” he said. “It gets crazy.”

Mr. Sansalone said the sculpture has mostly gotten a positive response. He hasn’t heard anyone mistaken Mr. Musk’s face for someone else. “I would say he is probably the most relevant person on the planet right now,” Mr. Sansalone said about Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person who recently bought Twitter Inc. for $44 billion.

In September, the sculpture sat in front of Tesla’s office in Palo Alto, Calif., during the company’s artificial-intelligence conference. Tesla employees crossed the street to take pictures with the sculpture, Mr. Sansalone said. Mr. Musk was at the conference, according to Twitter posts he made, and Mr. Sansalone assumes the billionaire saw the sculpture. 

“All there was to look at was a lit-up rocket erected in the middle of the street,” he said. 

On Saturday night, the group remained hopeful.

At one point in the evening, a group of about 20 people who were waiting outside started to chant “Elon claim your goat” in the hopes that the god of crypto, as one co-founder put it, would hear them.

“I’m a huge fan of Elon and I want to give this man his flowers while he’s alive,” said Aamir Manzoor, a 36-year-old from Toronto who is a holder of Elon GOAT. “He’s done a lot for the world.”

Write to Joseph Pisani at joseph.pisani@wsj.com, Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com and Adolfo Flores at adolfo.flores@wsj.com

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Business

TuSimple Fires CEO Xiaodi Hou Amid Federal Probes

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TuSimple Holdings Inc.,

TSP -46.16%

a self-driving trucking company, said Monday it had fired its chief executive and co-founder,

Xiaodi Hou.

The San Diego-based company said in a news release and securities filing that its board of directors on Sunday had ousted Mr. Hou, who was also the board chairman and chief technology officer. 

Mr. Hou was fired in connection with a continuing investigation by members of the board, the release said. That review “led the board to conclude that a change of Chief Executive Officer was necessary,” the company said in the release.

The securities filing said that the board’s investigation found that TuSimple this year shared confidential information with Hydron Inc., a trucking startup with operations mostly in China and funded by Chinese investors. The filing also said that TuSimple’s decision to share the confidential information hadn’t been disclosed to the board before TuSimple entered into a business deal with Hydron.

TuSimple said it didn’t know whether Hydron shared, or publicly disclosed, the confidential information, the securities filing said.

Messrs. Hou and Chen didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Hou’s termination was announced the day after The Wall Street Journal reported TuSimple and its leadership, principally Mr. Hou, faced investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Securities and Exchange Commission and Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., known as Cfius, into whether the company improperly financed and transferred technology to a Chinese startup, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

TuSimple’s stock plunged more than 44% Monday. Shares in the company are down more than 90% for the year. 

Investigators at the FBI and SEC are looking at whether Mr. Hou breached fiduciary duties and securities laws by failing to properly disclose TuSimple’s relationship with Hydron, the China-backed startup founded in 2021 by TuSimple co-founder Mo Chen that says it is developing autonomous hydrogen-powered trucks, the Journal reported. Federal investigators are also probing whether TuSimple shared with Hydron intellectual property developed in the U.S. and whether that action defrauded TuSimple investors by sending valuable technology to an overseas adversary.

The Journal also has reported that the board in July began investigating similar issues, including whether TuSimple incubated Hydron in China without informing regulators, the TuSimple board or its shareholders, said other people familiar with the matter. A June business presentation from Hydron viewed by the Journal named TuSimple as Hydron’s first customer, and said TuSimple would purchase from Hydron several hundred hydrogen-powered trucks equipped with self-driving technology. A TuSimple spokesman said the company has considered an agreement to buy freight trucks from Hydron but isn’t a Hydron customer. 

TuSimple’s securities filing on Monday said that TuSimple employees worked for Hydron and were paid, earning less than $300,000. The board wasn’t aware of this nor had members approve it, the filing said. Mr. Chen, who founded and leads Hydron, is TuSimple’s largest shareholder, owning about 11.8% of the company, according to FactSet.   

Mr. Hou’s dismissal follows months of upheaval at the company, including the departures of its chief financial officer and chief legal officer and a sharp drop in its stock price. Much of the turmoil began when Mr. Hou took over as CEO in March, said former employees. 

In April, one of TuSimple’s autonomous semi trucks crashed on an Arizona freeway. The accident revealed safety and security problems at TuSimple that former employees said leadership had dismissed, the Journal reported in August. 

The company said

Ersin Yumer,

TuSimple’s executive vice president of operations, will serve as interim CEO while the board searches for Mr. Hou’s successor. Mr. Yumer previously worked on autonomous-vehicle technology at

Aurora Innovation Inc.,

Uber Technologies Inc.

and Argo AI, the autonomous-driving venture partly owned by

Ford Motor Co.

and

Volkswagen AG

that was shut down recently. Independent board director

Brad Buss,

the former chief financial officer at SolarCity Corp. and Cypress Semiconductor Corp., will be chairman, TuSimple said.

TuSimple said it would release its third-quarter earnings on Monday after the market closes. The earnings release was previously scheduled for Tuesday. The company, ahead of the results, said it remained on track to meet the full-year guidance disclosed in August, including ending the year with a cash balance of about $950 million.

Write to Heather Somerville at heather.somerville@wsj.com and Kate O’Keeffe at kathryn.okeeffe@wsj.com

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Business

SoftBank Considers Launching a Third Vision Fund

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Global tech investor

SoftBank Group Corp.

is considering the launch of a new giant startup fund after ill-timed bets and massive losses weighed down two earlier attempts to dominate startup investing, according to people familiar with discussions at the company.

The Tokyo-based tech conglomerate, by far the world’s largest startup investor in recent years, would likely use its own cash for what would be the third SoftBank Vision Fund if it moves ahead with the plan, some of the people said.

The company is also considering putting additional money into Vision Fund 2, its main investment fund for the past few years, instead of starting a new fund, one of the people said. Vision Fund 2 is currently worth less than the investment that went into it. Those losses significantly reduce the pay for SoftBank staff working on the fund—a factor in its decision making. The company expects to make a decision in the coming months, the people said. 

SoftBank, led by Chief Executive Officer

Masayoshi Son,

has been hit particularly hard by the rout in tech valuations that began last fall, posting a record $23 billion loss in the three months ended in June. 

Much of that red ink is a product of its first two Vision Funds, the startup investment unit that Mr. Son formed in 2017 in a bid to dominate the venture sector. The $100 billion initial Vision Fund, which raised $60 billion from Saudi and Emirati wealth funds, was beset by giant soured bets on companies including WeWork Inc. and

Didi Global Inc.,

leading to meager gains over five years. 

The successor Vision Fund 2, funded by SoftBank and intended to be more cautious, is now worth 19% less than the $49 billion it invested, after accelerating its spending just as valuations peaked on companies including fintech Klarna Holdings AB. 

Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son has been hit particularly hard by the rout in tech valuations.



Photo:

Neil Hall/REUTERS

Mr. Son told investors in August he was “quite embarrassed and remorseful” after having gotten caught up in the frenzy, and he has substantially cut back spending on startups. Still, he has said he is committed to the startup and tech sector long term and eventually plans to increase spending again.

Mr. Son and SoftBank have tried to chart a new path forward after the market turned against unprofitable tech investments. He has also faced a string of departures of top staff. In July, the company said

Rajeev Misra,

who led the Vision Fund since it was created in 2017, would step back from his role overseeing new investments as he starts his own fund. 

Despite the misses, SoftBank expects to have more cash coming in over the next year, from a public listing of its chip maker Arm. Its Japanese telecom holdings also generate cash. 

Still, analysts and investors say the company’s options are more limited than in the past. Mr. Son has been selling down SoftBank’s stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and its telecom holdings, and funding a large stock-buyback program. The result has been an increasingly concentrated bet on startups, where results have been disappointing. 

Among those pushing for a new fund are some employees of the Vision Fund. A new fund would be a way to reset their compensation, which is partly based on profits at the fund and its investments, one of the people familiar with discussions said. The current fund would require making back large losses before employees could get those bonuses. A new fund would put profits closer in reach. The company is also considering restructuring staff incentives for Vision Fund 2. 

The size of the new fund couldn’t be determined. 

Mr. Son personally takes a hit with Vision Fund 2 in the red because of a $2.6 billion personal commitment he made. Based on the terms of the investment, Mr. Son didn’t put up the money himself but owes SoftBank if the fund ends up performing poorly.

The unusual investment has been criticized by some investors and analysts who say it could skew Mr. Son’s motivations given a structure that could make him more focused on Vision Fund 2 than on other investments. Mr. Son, who owns over one-fourth of SoftBank, has said the structure better aligns him with the investment fund.

SoftBank structured its arrangement in a way that allows the company to get repaid on most of its investment before Mr. Son. About $33 billion of its commitment to Vision Fund 2 is in preferred equity.

While that structure would have led to outsize profits for Mr. Son if Vision Fund 2 did well, today it means particularly large losses because the fund is underwater. Mr. Son currently owes $2.1 billion on the investment, SoftBank disclosures show. He is charged a 3% annual interest rate on his unpaid balance to SoftBank.

From the Archives: SoftBank’s longtime strategy of dumping mountains of cash on promising young companies to create big winners failed dramatically at WeWork and is inviting scrutiny into the fund’s other investments. Here’s a look at Vision Fund’s structure, and how its fast-paced investment strategy could make it risky.

Write to Eliot Brown at Eliot.Brown@wsj.com and Julie Steinberg at julie.steinberg@wsj.com

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Business

WSJ Tech Live Conference Features Interviews With Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, CEOs of ViacomCBS and Reddit

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The Wall Street Journal is hosting its virtual Tech Live conference with top executives, technologists and policy makers to discuss a range of issues including the lasting impact of Covid-19, as businesses grapple with disrupted supply chains, a shrinking labor force and the continuing chip shortage.

The conference launches at a time when lawmakers are re-examining big tech on issues ranging from privacy to competition. The Wall Street Journal’s investigation of

Facebook Inc.

has also led to new momentum for tougher tech laws, including special online protections for children.

Here is a rundown of interviews. Access to the conference is complimentary for Journal subscribers. You can see more details here.

First, starting at 11:15 a.m. ET,

ViacomCBS Inc.

VIAC -0.32%

Chief Executive

Robert Bakish

discusses the company’s investments in content and plans to increase global subscribers, following a recent leadership revamp at Paramount Pictures.

The conference then features conversations about the cutting edge of transportation. Grab Holdings Inc. co-founder Hooi Ling Tan will discuss plans to go public in a record-setting special-purpose acquisition and the company’s future in last-mile deliveries and financial services at 11:40 a.m. ET. Two astronauts who traveled to the edge of space with actor William Shatner will talk about their space tourism experience at 12:05 p.m. ET. Later, one of the top researchers in artificial intelligence,

Raquel Urtasun,

will speak about the future of autonomous trucking at 12:40 p.m. ET.

Investor

Alexis Ohanian

speaks at 12:15 p.m. ET on his latest venture capital endeavor, Seven Seven Six, which has focuses on founders’ well-being at a time of increased burnout and always-on work culture.

Alphabet CEO

Sundar Pichai

speaks at 2 p.m. ET on Google’s evolving workplace culture, privacy concerns and regulatory challenges, as the company battles antitrust lawsuits domestically and a $5 billion antitrust fine in Europe. Then, Reddit CEO

Steve Huffman

will discuss the social media platform’s global expansion, as the popularity of “meme stocks” helped to catapult the platform to a $10 billion valuation.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai in Switzerland last year.



Photo:

fabrice coffrini/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Online educator Sal Khan talks about the future of virtual learning at 3:15 p.m. ET, followed by Cameo CEO Steven Galanis, who will speak about the growing opportunities for content creators to monetize their fan bases.

Arm Holdings CEO

Simon Segars

speaks at 4:35 p.m. ET about the continuing chip supply issues, in light of companies like

Apple Inc.

designing their own microchips. Following that, Xbox head

Phil Spencer

will speak about cloud gaming and the future of the console.

At 5:30 p.m. ET, the day concludes with basketball star and Los Angeles Lakers forward Carmelo Anthony who will speak about his tech investments, including his investment with Overtime Sports Inc.

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Business

Tech Startup Financing Hits Records as Giant Funds Dwarf Venture Capitalists

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Big money-management firms expanded their dominance in Silicon Valley last quarter, crowding out venture capitalists in a once-niche business and putting 2021 on pace to nearly double last year’s record in startup financing.

Hedge funds, mutual funds, pensions, sovereign-wealth groups and other so-called nontraditional venture investors were more active in the second quarter than in any previous period, according to research firm PitchBook Data Inc. These firms participated in 42% of startup financing deals, and those deals accounted for more than three-quarters of the invested capital, according to Pitchbook.

Investment in U.S. startups for the first half of 2021 hit $150 billion, eclipsing full-year funding every year before 2020, according to a report from PitchBook.

The large asset firms have massive pools of capital, move quickly and are less likely to ask for board seats or involvement in company decisions, often making them more appealing to founders, according to interviews with investors and startup executives. The result has been a dizzying pace of deal making.

“It’s like speed dating but more extreme,” said Peter Fishman, a longtime Silicon Valley tech professional who last year co-founded data-automation startup Mozart Data Inc.

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Business

WeWork Agrees to SPAC Deal That Would Take Startup Public

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WeWork has agreed to merge with a special-purpose acquisition company, according to people familiar with the matter, in a deal that would take the shared-office provider public nearly two years after its high-profile failure to launch a traditional IPO.

The planned merger with the BowX Acquisition Corp. SPAC would value WeWork at $9 billion including debt, the people said. WeWork would also raise $1.3 billion, including $800 million in a so-called private investment in public equity, or PIPE, from Insight Partners, funds managed by Starwood Capital Group, Fidelity Management and others, the people said.

In January, The Wall Street Journal reported that WeWork was in talks to combine with BowX.

WeWork is a big player in the market for flexible office space. It signs long-term leases with landlords, then after renovating a space and furnishing it, subleases small offices or even whole buildings to tenants for as little as a month at a time. Should the merger close in the coming months as expected, it would cap what has been a long and bumpy road toward a listing for WeWork.

The company is taking advantage of a torrent of new SPACs to accomplish what it failed to pull off in 2019, when public investors rejected the money-losing company and its visionary yet erratic leader, Adam Neumann, who subsequently resigned as chairman and CEO. Further hit by the coronavirus pandemic, which has emptied out offices throughout the country, WeWork has closed locations, renegotiated leases and cut thousands of jobs in a bid to slash expenses.

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Business

Grab Is in Talks to Go Public Through a SPAC Merger

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Grab Holdings Inc. is in talks to go public through a merger with a SPAC that could value the Southeast Asian ride-hailing startup at as much as $40 billion, making it by far the largest such deal on record.

The Singapore company is discussing a deal with a special-purpose acquisition company affiliated with Altimeter Capital Management LP that would value it at between $35 billion and $40 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. (Altimeter has two SPACS; it couldn’t be learned which one is in talks with Grab.)

As part of the deal, Grab would raise between $3 billion and $4 billion in a so-called PIPE, a funding round that typically accompanies a SPAC merger, the people said. That amount could still change as Grab and Altimeter will start meeting with mutual funds and other potential investors soon, some of the people said.

The parties could announce the deal in the next few weeks, though the talks could still fall apart and Grab could revert to an earlier plan to stage a traditional initial public offering on a U.S. exchange this year.

Should they move forward with a SPAC deal, it would be the high-water mark in a recent explosion of such transactions, in which an empty shell raises money in an IPO with plans to later find one or more companies to merge with. In some cases, the SPAC ends up with only a small sliver of the newly public target.

The vehicles have caught fire in the last couple of years, with everyone from former baseball player Alex Rodriguez to ex-House Speaker Paul Ryan getting in on the action. They have helped break a bottleneck between the private and public markets as companies that were reluctant to go public line up to combine with SPACs, which offer in many cases a speedier route to a listing without costs and disclosure limitations that accompany traditional IPOs.

The biggest SPAC deal to date is United Wholesale Mortgage’s roughly $16 billion combination with Gores Holdings IV Inc., announced in September. The biggest one so far this year is electric-vehicle company Lucid Motors Inc.’s agreement last month to merge with Michael Klein’s

Churchill Capital Corp.

IV, a deal valued at nearly $12 billion, according to Dealogic.

So far this year, a record $70 billion-plus has been raised for SPACs, which account for more than 70% of all public stock sales, according to Dealogic. A slew of companies are in talks for a SPAC merger or already have agreed to one, including office-sharing firm WeWork, online photo-book maker Shutterfly Inc. and online lender Social Finance Inc.

In addition to ride-hailing, Grab, which traces its roots back to 2011, delivers restaurant, grocery and other items and provides digital financial services to merchants.

Its backers include

SoftBank Group Corp.

,

Uber Technologies Inc.

and

Toyota Motor Corp.

It was last publicly valued at around $15 billion in an October 2019 fundraising round, according to PitchBook.

Its valuation is on the rise as public investors pile into other ride-hailing and food-delivery companies. Uber’s shares have jumped sharply in the past several months, while

DoorDash Inc.

went public in December at a valuation far in excess of where it had raised money privately. The restaurant-delivery company now has a market capitalization of nearly $47 billion.

Altimeter’s SPACs—Altimeter Growth Corp. and Altimeter Growth Corp. 2—raised $450 million and $400 million in October and January IPOs, respectively. Altimeter Capital, of Menlo Park, Calif., has around $16 billion under management and primarily invests in technology companies.

The firm has racked up a string of successful investments and was one of the main participants in a January round of funding

Roblox Corp.

raised ahead of its IPO at $45 a share. In its debut Wednesday, shares of the videogame platform traded more than 50% above that level and continued rising Thursday.

SoftBank, which invested through its Vision Fund, is also poised to win big on Grab, just as another of its bets proves to be a gigantic winner: The Japanese technology-investing giant has now made roughly $25 billion on paper on its $2.7 billion investment in South Korean e-commerce company

Coupang Inc.,

which soared 41% in its trading debut Thursday.

Private companies are flooding to special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, to bypass the traditional IPO process and gain a public listing. WSJ explains why some critics say investing in these so-called blank-check companies isn’t worth the risk. Illustration: Zoë Soriano/WSJ

Write to Maureen Farrell at maureen.farrell@wsj.com

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