SPAC Frenzy Emboldens Silicon Valley Startups to Forgo Venture Funding

SPAC Frenzy Emboldens Silicon Valley Startups to Forgo Venture Funding

California aerospace startup Archer Aviation Inc. has a multibillion-dollar vision of flying people around town in autonomous electric helicopters. It doesn't have revenue or a vehicle ready for liftoff, but that hasn't slowed the three-year-old company.

Instead of toiling away in obscurity with a shoestring budget, the traditional way for startups to spend their formative years, Archer became part of the SPAC frenzy gripping Wall Street. This month it announced an agreement to merge with a special-purpose acquisition company, raising $1.1 billion—and gaining a valuation of $2.7 billion.

“The SPAC market was actually a really great spot to go to raise a lot of capital in one big swoop,” Archer co-founder and co-CEO Adam Goldstein said. The company is slated to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange in a few months.

SPACs have flipped the script on the multidecade model of development for early-stage startups, enabling fledgling companies with little or no revenue to tap public markets sooner. The shift lets amateur investors—long excluded from