SmartRent.com Inc., which sells smart home technology systems to apartment building owners and developers, plans to make it public through a merger with a special purpose procurement company that values the property startup at $ 2.2 billion. dollars, according to people familiar with the problem.
SmartRent, whose technology is used in about 185,000 apartments in the US and Canada, plans to announce on Thursday that it will merge with Fifth Wall Acquisition Corp., which raised about $ 345 million in an initial public offering earlier this year. , people said. The special purpose company was sponsored by Fifth Wall, a venture capital firm that invested in SmartRent last year through one of its funds.
Separately, some of the largest apartment building owners and home developers in the U.S. – who are also customers of SmartRent – have agreed to invest a total of $ 155 million in the startup, according to People familiarize yourself with the problem. This group includes the Blackstone Group Inc.,
Starwood Capital Group LLC, Lennar Body.
and Guest Houses Inc.,
people said.
The merger, expected to close at the end of this year, following a regulatory review and shareholder voting, would be one of the largest such transactions involving a technology company and a special-purpose procurement company to date. SPACs, also called blank-check companies, have become popular in the capital markets and with proptech technology firms in the last year because they allow private firms to go public faster and more securely than the traditional initial public offerings.
SmartRent, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, was founded in 2017 by Lucas Haldeman, former technical director of Colony Starwood Homes, which later became known as Starwood Waypoint Homes and was merged into Invitation Homes, one of the largest owners of houses for rent for families. His idea was to provide rental units with many of the smart home features that have become more widely used in homes that people own than in homes that people rent.
Owners can use SmartRent technology to operate and monitor thermostats, utilities, security and plumbing on a computer or smartphone. Landlords can also provide tenants with apps that can support these features, along with other smart home technologies – such as Siri and Alexa virtual assistants – that tenants decide to add.
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