By Steve Goldstein
Chamath Palihapitiya warns retail investors into putting money into his new special purpose acquisition company.
Chamath Palihapitiya has carried out what some might consider to be a threat – launch a new special purpose acquisition company despite a checkered record in doing so.
In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Palihapitiya detailed what will be called the American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corp, which is incorporated in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands.
The new SPAC will seek out to merge or buy a company in the field of energy production, AI, decentralized finance or defense.
The S-1 filing does go through Palihapitiya’s investment history – from his background as a Facebook executive to his successes as a venture-capital investor backing Slack Technologies and Box among others, to the SPAC history.
Using the official numbers, here’s the updated performance record on the person who was nicknamed the SPAC king – not too much different from MarketWatch’s previous tabulation. It leaves out his investment in the SPAC that turned into MP Materials (MP), since he led the private investment in public equity, or PIPE, but didn’t sponsor it himself.
A few of his SPACs never found a merger partner so returned the money to investors.
Company Return Virgin Galactic -98.50% Opendoor Technologies -68.30% Clover Health -73.50% Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. IV SoFi Technologies 137% Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. V Akili -95.70% Social Capital Suvretta Holdings Corp. II ProKidney -76.40% Social Capital Suvretta Holdings Corp. IV Source: SEC filing/MarketWatch calculations
“We believe that retail investors should only participate if (a) this investment is a small part of an otherwise diversified portfolio, (b) this investment is a quantum of capital they can afford to completely lose and (c) if they do lose their entire capital, they will embody the adage from President Trump that there can be ‘no crying in the casino.’”
Trump is not actually not known for saying that, though it was what Argentina President Javier Milei said when a cryptocurrency promoted on his social-media handle plunged in value.
Palihapitiya will also take a 30% promote fee, rather than the standard 20%, though it will be conditional on achieving a 50% premium to the IPO price.
Santander U.S. Capital Markets is the underwriter.
-Steve Goldstein
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08-19-25 0430ET
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