thecoinrise.com
W3BCloud, a blockchain data service provider, has reached a merger agreement with Social Leverage Acquisition Corp 1 (SLAC.N). The agreement will see the combined entity get listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) through the Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) route.
The merger agreement is expected to fetch W3BCloud $345 million from Social Leverage Corp 1. It will also receive $40 million from ConsenSys, SK Inc., and others, and an extra $10 million from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). All of these funds are subject to specific terms and conditions and bring the combined valuation of the firm to $1.25 billion.
With funds from the merger, W3BCloud plans to leverage SLAC’s experience to rapidly scale its platform. It also intends to improve its adoption by blockchain developers to beat centralized services like Microsoft Azure which are largely preferred by developers.
According to its CEO Sam Issa, the deal allows it to position itself for Web3’s anticipated economic growth and also support developers. He also mentioned that with support from its partners AMD and ConsenSys and SLAC’s expertise, W3BCloud will become the leading platform for the web3 economy.
After the completion of the deal, the new outfit will have W3BCloud’s Sami Issa as the CEO, and Wael Aburiba as the CFO. Consenys’ founder John Lubin and SLAC’s chairman Paul Grinberg will join the board.
The merger is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2022 assuming all customary closing conditions are satisfied.
The SPAC Difference
SPAC, also called a blank cheque company, is a publicly-traded company. It is specifically designed to acquire private firms and thus take it public without going through the usual process. SPACs are used to pool funds to finance an acquisition.
The merger deal still has regulatory hurdles to cross before it is completed.
W3BCloud is a collaboration between Advanced Micro Devices and ConsenSys making it one of the largest providers of blockchain computing services. It currently serves some of the biggest blockchain projects like Solana, raking in $40 million in sales last year.
All of its seven data centers are situated in the United States with 85% of them running on renewable energy. SPAC deals are gradually becoming common among crypto entities. As reported earlier by TheCoinRise, blockchain infrastructure firm Roxe has also secured a $3.6 billion SPAC deal with Goldenstone back in June.