SPACInsider

With Matt George, CEO of Merlin Labs Many firms chasing autonomous ground-vehicles have relied on SPACs to reach the public markets, and now Merlin Labs wants to bring autonomy to the skies. The Boston-based startup is developing an AI-powered “pilot,” the Merlin Pilot, designed to manage full “takeoff-to-touchdown” flights across a wide range of aircraft, from light planes to heavy transports. This week, we talk with Merlin Labs CEO Matt George about why the company sat out the first wave of SPAC-driven aerospace mania, and why partnering with Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. IV (Nasdaq: BACQ) feels like the right moment to go public. Matt explains that, in aviation, the use cases for autonomy can be more immediate and valuable than on the ground, from reducing crew needs on cargo and transport flights to enabling fully uncrewed operations in military and civil aviation. We also explore the broader macro conditions driving demand higher, and where the market for autonomous flight stands today. How fast could it grow, and how high could it fly?  

With Ranjeet Sundher, CEO of Tactical Resources, and Kanishka Roy, CEO and Chairman of Plum Acquisition Corp. III SPACs have played a big role in the race to develop US-based sources of rare earth materials, but few available target companies are within a few years having an operational mine. Tactical Resources aims to be the exception. This week, we speak with Ranjeet Sundher, CEO of rare earth miner Tactical Resources, and Kanishka Roy, CEO and Chairman of Plum Acquisition Corp. III (OTC:PLMJF). They came together in a $589 million business combination announced in August. Ranjeet explains how the unique qualities of his company's Peak Project could lend itself to a much earlier commercial launch. And Kanishka lays out how that timeline impacts the value case for this transaction in an environment where the demands and supply limits don’t look to ease anytime soon.  

Affordability has become a major theme of 2025 and of all the areas where technology has sped up processes and brought down costs, housing has been a stubborn exception. One company that is trying to bring a new technology-based approach to this is BOXABL, and it has partnered with a SPAC to accelerate that vision. This week, we speak with Galiano Taramani, founder and co-CEO of BOXABL and Larry Swets Jr., CEO of FG Merger Corp. II (NASDAQ:FGMC). The two announced a $3.5 billion combination in August. Galiano explains how BOXABL has found an edge in how it ships its modular homes and how it hopes to eventually manufacture them at a rate of one house per minute. Larry explains how BOXABL’s unique crowdfunding path gives FG Merger II confidence in the company’s journey after listing and how adding financial services angles to its platform could potentially take it to the next level.  

Presidio CEO Will Ulrich and EQV Ventures CEO Jerry Silvey Discuss Their $664 Million Combination How do you build a fast-growing oil and gas company without drilling single hole and without planning to at any point in the future? That may sound like a riddle, but it’s actually a business model that public investors will soon be able to invest in. This week, we speak with Will Ulrich, CEO of energy firm Presidio and Jerry Silvey, CEO of EQV Ventures Acquisition Corp. (NYSE:EQV). The two announced a $664 million combination in August. Will explains how Presidio has built a platform to acquire and optimize mature oil and gas assets and why he is confident that the company’s playbook will allow it to remain aggressive while still paying out a sizeable dividend as soon as it lists. Jerry tells us how his team’s first SPAC has managed to secure institutional buy-in for its vision at each stage and why he believes the time to accelerate Presidio’s strategy is now.  

Infleqtion CEO Matthew Kinsella on the Business of Quantum Sensing and the Road Ahead (CCCX) With capital pouring into quantum computing, the question is no longer if it will arrive, but what other parts of the quantum world are already here? This week, we speak with Matthew Kinsella, CEO of Infleqtion. It announced a $1.8 billion business combination with Churchill Capital Corp. X (NASDAQ: CCCX) in September. Infleqtion has already commercialized a line of quantum sensing devices for defense applications, which has put it ahead of many in the quantum pack in terms of revenue. Matthew explains why the company has decided to carve out a place for itself in this area of critical technology while still simultaneously working to advance its computing technology and where he thinks the industry could be headed. Which quantum computer will win? And, how much more addressable work is out there already in the quantum sensing market once Infleqtion is able to put this deal’s proceeds to work?  

A conversation on nuclear’s next wave with Giordano Morichi of Terra Innovatum and Gus Garcia of GSR III Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ: GSRT) Developers of small, modular nuclear reactors have been among the most prized stocks of 2025 given their potential to be big players in the energy mix as data center demand booms. This demand is massive, but when it comes to nuclear reactor design, Terra Innovatum believes it’s a matter of the smaller the better. This week, we speak with Giordano Morichi, Chief Business Development Officer and Head of Investor Relations at Terra Innovatum, and Gus Garcia, Co-CEO of GSR III Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ:GSRT). The two announced a $475 million business combination April and are now nearing the end of their merger process. Giordano explains why the unique size of Terra Innovatum’s 1 MW reactor designs make it a more competitive fit for a host of applications, and how its fuel source could get it to market faster initially and more efficiently over time. Gus gets into how these factors have the potential to compound Terra Innovatum’s advantages and why the major gains made by the company’s listed peers has made its valuation even more attractive since the deal was struck.  

This week, we sit down with Dynamix Corporation (NASDAQ:ETHM) CEO and Chair Andrejka Bernatova, who is about to list her third SPAC in the past four years with one business combination already completed and another pending. She tells us how it has been quite the ride through the last two SPAC cycles and where she thinks SPACs at times went wrong during the last one. Right now, she is focused on completing Dynamix’s combination with crypto treasury firm The Ether Machine. She explains why her team zeroed in on Ethereum as the cryptocurrency with the most promise and how that vision was informed by her team’s history of dealmaking in the oil and gas space. How will these crypto treasury plays continue to differentiate as they become more numerous? And, what opportunities does she see around the bend for Dynamix III?  

SPACs have been highly active lately in taking public a new generation of nuclear technology companies, but in order for those companies to meet the power demand being driven by the boom in datacenter deployments, they are going to need a steady supply of uranium. This week, we speak with Mark Mukhidja, CEO of uranium mining firm Eagle Energy Metals, and Chris Sorrells, Chairman and CEO of Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. II (NASDAQ:SVII). The two announced a $312 million dollar combination back in July that would create a unique stock that is a pure play on US-based uranium production. Mark explains how the US went from being a leading uranium producer to one that imports nearly all of its uranium and how Eagle Energy’s Aurora project has the potential to start turning that around. Chris tells us why this upstream nuclear play is a logical follow-up to Spring Valley I’s successful combination with small nuclear reactor developer NuScale (NYSE:SMR) and why he believes this transaction is structured with both Eagle Energy’s short-term and long-term financing needs in mind.  

This week, we return to the subject of autonomous trucking with a SPAC target that already logged months of its trucks operating autonomously in an industrial setting with rollouts on public highways and defense applications inbound. That company is Kodiak, which announced a $2.6 billion combination with Ares Acquisition Corporation II (NYSE:AACT) in April. Kodiak CEO Don Burnette joins us to explain how the company has sought to blaze a trail to commercialization for the company while burning a fraction of the R&D cash that some of its peers have to get to this same point. Don explains how the company has looked to apply that same capital efficiency to the structure of its SPAC combination and what opportunities he sees on the other side of the company’s drive into the public markets.  

In this SPACInsider Podcast REPLAY, we go back to January 2022 when the abrupt end of 2021’s SPAC euphoria was setting in, and new strategies were needed to weather the storm. We sat down with Niccolo de Masi of the dMY SPACs to get his takes on how SPACs were going to roll with the punches and his own vision for when a refreshed SPAC cycle would reemerge. Now that SPACs are back, which of these predictions came to fruition and what lessons from the down market have teams brought into the new cycle? Give it a listen