Crowd safety company Evolv to make $ 1.7 billion public merger SPAC

Supported by investors, including Microsoft Body.

co-founder Bill Gates and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush merge Evolv with SPAC NewHold Investment Body.

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Headquartered outside of Boston, Evolv uses artificial intelligence and data science to examine people for weapons and other threats. The company says its platform eliminates the need for devices such as metal detectors and physical security checks. It is used in locations such as Six Flags Entertainment Body.

amusement parks, Lincoln Center in New York and Gillette Stadium, home to the New England Patriots of the National Football League. Evolv says it has tracked more than 50 million people in the past four years, the second largest in the world for the Transportation Security Administration alone.

In 2020, Evolv also began using its technology to check people’s high body temperatures, a feature that chief executive Peter George said is in high demand as businesses reopen after shutdowns designed to stop the spread of coronavirus. .

“We were built to solve this problem of securing places,” George said in an interview.

Founded in 2013, Evolv joins the growing group of technology companies that go public by merging with SPACs, also known as companies with incomplete verification. SPACs such as NewHold Investment are shell companies that list on a stock exchange for the sole purpose of acquiring a private company such as Evolv to make it public. The private company then obtains the SPAC place on the stock market.

NewHold raised $ 150 million when it went public last summer and was one of several empty-check companies competing to make Evolv public, said NewHold CEO Kevin Charlton.

Through the merger and an associated round of fundraising called private equity investment or PIPE, Evolv is expected to generate revenues of approximately $ 470 million. PIPE investors in the transaction include famous athletes such as former NFL defender Peyton Manning and tennis players Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf.

Mr Charlton said SPAC would use some of its own capital to launch a public corporation designed to make the Evolv platform accessible to locations such as schools. Evolv executives are also expected to contribute to the PBC.

In addition to Gates and Bush, Evolv counts venture capital firms such as General Catalyst and Lux ​​Capital among its existing investors. None of the existing investors sell as part of the transaction.

Combining with a SPAC has become a popular way for a company to go public because SPAC mergers allow startups to make pink projections – something that is not allowed in a traditional initial public offering – and gain business creators with incomplete verification of several times the initial investment on average. Two hundred and twenty-eight check-free firms raised $ 73 billion this year, putting the market on track to destroy last year’s record of more than $ 80 billion, according to data provider SPAC Research.

SPAC shares and the companies that merged with them have been fighting lately, with investors withdrawing from technology stocks and government bond yields rising. NewHold shares fell around the $ 10 IPO price last week. However, many new companies with empty verification enter the market and reveal offers. Thirty-nine new SPACs raised money last week.

The Evolv deal is expected to be completed in the second quarter, and Evolv is expected to trade on the Nasdaq under the “EVLV” checkbox.

Write to Amrith Ramkumar at [email protected]