Robots and bitcoin kickstart the SPAC mania of 2025

Welcome to AI Collision 💥,

In today’s collision between AI and our world:

• SPAC-street’s back alright
• White house warning
• Generation gap

If that’s enough to get the SPACs listing again, read on…

AI Collision 💥

Remember the SPAC mania of 2021? When every futuristic idea under the sun, from flying taxis to meatless meat, found a shortcut to the public markets by sneaking through the backdoor of a blank-check company?

It feels like it was ages ago, and I guess it was. But it’s all of a sudden back on the forefront of investors minds thanks to robotics, and bitcoin.

This week I got notification from a source that autonomous trucking, Kodiak Robotics is going public via a $2.5 billion merger with Ares Acquisition Corporation II—and just like that, SPACs are back in the AI spotlight.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Yes, we’ve seen this movie before, and not all SPACs had a happy ending. Many 2021 darlings now trade like penny stocks, and the hangover from that speculative excess still lingers across the market.

Some companies have recovered, and then gone on to soar past their SPAC baseline prices. But many still have not.

A most perfect example is Aurora Innovation (NASDAQ:AUR). This AI enabled self-driving trucking company (a direct competitor to Kodiak) listed in 2021 via a SPAC merger.

Their stock price went from the baseline $10 SPAC price, up about 70% in the first month or so, then cratered in 2022 with most SPAC-led listings to a low of around $1 by the end of 2022.

It’s since recovered as you can see below, but still not to it’s original listing success.

While Kodiak is late to the SPAC party, you’ve got to look at the story of Aurora as a valuable history lesson of investing in innovative, developmental companies with few (if any) revenues that are high growth, high risk, high potential for both huge short term profits and huge short term tanking lower.

Worth noting that this is the second big SPAC listing announcment. The other getting far more headlines is the launch of 21 Capital, a new bitcoin services company with backing from Tether, Softbank and Bitfinex, that’s hitting the market via Cantor Fitzgerald’s SPAC vehicle.

Two SPACs in one week…are SPACs really back?

Anyway, back to the more AI-related Kodiak…

Founded by Don Burnette, who cut his teeth at Google’s self-driving car project and helped launch Otto before Uber gobbled it up, Kodiak has quietly become one of the most credible names in autonomous trucking. Its trucks—powered by the modular “Kodiak Driver” platform—have racked up 2.6 million miles across U.S. highways.

Not in a simulation. Not in a demo. But in real-world long-haul freight routes.

And earlier this year, Kodiak delivered its first commercial “RoboTrucks” to Atlas Energy Solutions, a first real move into what out-and-out commercialisation might look like. Atlas has committed to 100 trucks. That’s not a proof of concept—that’s a real customer deploying real machines to move real cargo.

The deal with Ares Acquisition Corporation II will see Kodiak list on Nasdaq under the ticker KDK. It comes with $551 million in trust and another $110 million in PIPE funding from Soros Fund Management, ARK Invest, and Ares Management. That’s some big swinging institutional capital betting on AI in one of America’s most important industries.

It’s also a signal as I’ve written to you about before.

This is one of the first robotics IPOs we’re seeing in 2025, just as predicted. Whether it came via SPAC or traditional IPO is somewhat irrelevant, we knew these kinds of AI-based companies, and robotics in particular were lining up to hit the markets. And now they are.

Yes, Kodiak is littered with risks, and you’d need a healthy dose of risk tolerance to give it a proper look. But it’s worth having a proper look. The SPAC market is a different beast to what it was in 2021, and the market right now is certainly not frothing and peaking.

Maybe this time around, things play out a little different? But what is very clear is that capital is flowing again, robotics is going to be as important as AI in the markets this year and we’re now just starting to see I think the early stages of a 2021 style market boom.

Keep a close eye on this play, and this space.

White House Advisor Warns: “This changes everything”

Over five decades, Jim Rickards has advised the CIA, Pentagon and Treasury. He also predicted the 2008 crash, Brexit, COVID and both Trump wins.

Now, he says President Trump has just done “the unthinkable”. He’s unlocked a long-buried mechanism. And in the process, set in motion an event that could be worth an estimated $150.

Capital at risk. Forecasts are not a reliable indicator of future results.

Boomers & Busters 💰

AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).

Boom 📈

• Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) up 11%
• Xpeng (NYSE:XPEV) up 9%
• Vertiv (NYSE:VRT) up 8%

Bust 📉

• Allegro Microsystems (NASDAQ:ALGM) down 7%
• JD.com (NASDAQ:JD) down 5%
• Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) down 2%

From the hive mind 🧠

• This is hilarious. And also typical from Meta. An optional feature that can’t actually be turned off. In other words, not optional.
• A periodic table of AI is surprisingly one of the best non-AI ideas I’ve seen about AI recently,
• Will AI improve your life? That’s really all anyone wants to know, and the only thing we really need to know in order to embrace it. So, let’s ask 4,000 scientists.

Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️

Weirdest AI of the day

ChatGPT’s random quote of the day

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,

Sam Volkering

Editor-in-Chief

AI Collision