The rebound in blank-check companies is proving to be a useful route to public markets for companies involved in the artificial intelligence-data center build-out, said Betsy Cohen, a veteran of dealmaking in special purpose acquisition companies (SPAC).
The Cohen Circle LLC co-founder, speaking on Bloomberg TV’s weekly deals show Wednesday, said that some tech startups focused on powering data centers or creating faster, more powerful quantum computers have seen SPACs as a better option than traditional initial public offerings. That’s a switch from the 1990s, when SPACs were first used to provide capital to the steel industry.
“We now have a whole different group of companies that need capital, whether it’s data centers or nuclear stations or AI or involve anything that you might think of that has a deep capital and continuing capital need,” Cohen said.
SPAC deals hit an all-time high in 2021, with 199 mergers that took companies public. That plunged to 43 in 2025. Already this year, 20 such mergers have been completed and 110 more are pending, according to data provided by SPAC Research.
Anna Pinedo, a partner at law firm Mayer Brown, said deals by SPAC companies will benefit from regulatory changes by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Periscope Capital portfolio manager Christine McNerney said SPAC sponsors and investors are more disciplined than they were in 2021.
“We don’t need to go back to that,” she said. “We really learned in 2021 that credibility matters much more than hype, so I think the SPAC market is at a healthy point right now and this is probably a good level for it to stay at.”
Copyright 2026 Bloomberg.
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