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Singapore’s Grab to go public at US$40 billion valuation amid SPAC frenzy

  • The deal would be the biggest acquisition ever by a blank cheque company known as a SPAC
  • Grab is Southeast Asia’s most valuable tech unicorn, with businesses spanning ride-hailing to food delivery

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A rider for GrabFood, Grab Holdings online food-delivery platform, cycles outside Raffles Place in Singapore. The company plans to go public via a US-listed special purpose acquisiton company. Photo: Bloomberg
Alison Tudor-AckroydandChad Bray

Grab Holdings, Southeast Asia’s most valuable tech unicorn, said it would go public via a US-listed special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in a deal that would value the company at about US$39.6 billion.

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The Singapore ride-hailing and food-delivery giant would merge with Altimeter Growth, an investment vehicle backed by Silicon Valley’s Altimeter Capital Management, and go public with a listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

As part of the deal, investors have agreed to provide more than US$4 billion in so-called private investment in public equity (PIPE) financing. Grab will receive up to US$4.5 billion in cash from the overall transaction.

The deal marks the biggest acquisition ever involving a SPAC, and a high point in one of the hottest fundraising trends globally. The largest-ever listing by a Southeast Asian tech company in the US showcases the lead American regulators have taken over their counterparts in Hong Kong to Singapore who are only now considering listing rules changes to accommodate the blank cheque companies.

“We have sizeable and real profit centres now within the business. The way that we think about [a US listing] is it is a natural evolution as we get more and more mature,” Ming Maa, Grab’s president, told the Post. The US listing “would be the next stage to access a different set of investors.”

In an unusual move, the pipe sponsor Altimeter Capital Management has agreed to a three-year lock-up of their stock, signalling their confidence in Grab’s future value to other investors. The firm is also donating 10 per cent of its sponsor shares to the GrabForGood fund, a recently launched endowment to support quality-of-life programmes for its drivers, partners and the broader Southeast Asian community.
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