Autonomous trucking startup Plus to go public at $1.2B valuation in SPAC deal

Is SPAC making a comeback? After months of silence, merger deals are slowly starting to return. One of the latest: Plus Automation is heading to the public markets through a merger with Churchill Capital Corp IX, a blank-check firm led by Wall Street veteran Michael Klein, the companies announced on Thursday. The deal values Plus at $1.2 billion and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025.

The merger will give Plus about $300 million in gross proceeds, money it plans to use to gear up for the commercial launch of its autonomous trucks in 2027. It’s a big milestone for a company that tried this once before, Plus pulled out of a $3.3 billion SPAC deal during the height of the 2021 frenzy when enthusiasm for blank-check mergers started unraveling, Reuters reported.

This time around, the market feels different. While SPAC deals have been largely frozen over the last couple of years thanks to tighter regulations and higher interest rates, a few are starting to resurface, especially in sectors where long-term bets still attract deep-pocketed backers.

SPACs (short for special purpose acquisition companies) are shell companies that go public with one goal: to merge with a real business. Once that happens, the private company takes over the SPAC’s public listing. So far in 2025, SPACs are behind 53 of the 72 IPOs in the U.S., according to SPACAnalytics.com.

Plus, founded in 2016, has been working on its self-driving tech for nearly a decade and is currently testing on public roads in Texas and Sweden, with more trials lined up for fall 2025. The company provides autonomy software to major truck manufacturers like Traton, Hyundai, and Iveco, and has already rolled out some of its systems in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Trucking operators in the U.S., who handle the bulk of freight movement, are warming up to automation as they face labor shortages, tighter margins, and demand for faster delivery times. Self-driving tech could cut operating costs, but it’s still a long road from test fleets to mainstream adoption.

The regulatory environment might help. The Trump administration is expected to ease some of the existing safety rules around autonomous vehicles, including exemptions for certain models and relaxed incident reporting requirements. California’s DMV has also proposed allowing testing of self-driving heavy-duty trucks on public roads, a move that could open new doors for companies like Plus.

The space is seeing cautious progress across the board. Uber-backed Aurora Innovation, which went public via a $13 billion SPAC deal in 2021, is running similar trials in Texas, as more companies move from pitch decks to pilots.

So, is this the SPAC thaw? Too early to say. But with real deployments and more predictable roadmaps, Plus is hoping this second attempt at going public actually sticks.