Facebook alum Chamath Palihapitiya raises $600 million in IPO for his blank-check firm (IPOA.U)

Chamath Palihapitiya

Midas-touch investor Chamath Palihapitiya has raised $600 million in the IPO for his new firm, Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings.
Shares priced at $10 each went up on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday under the ticker "IPOA.U"
The firm will use its IPO money to fund other well-performing private tech startups.

Chamath Palihapitiya, founder of VC firm Social Capital, is setting himself up to become the Warren Buffett of tech investing. To that end, he has launched a new "blank-check" company in partnership with London-based VC firm Hedosophia, aptly named Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp.

On Wednesday, Social Capital Hedosophia announced it had raised $600 million in its IPO, according to Axios, an increase from the $500 million the company originally filed for at the beginning of September. The shares were listed on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday for $10 a piece and were up 3.5% in the first half of the day Thursday.

Despite the high price tag, Social Capital Hedosophia doesn't have any products or customers, and it doesn't actually anything, yet. The company plans to buy stakes in private tech companies, ranging from minority stakes to controlling interests to full ownership.

The idea is to give these tech companies the benefits of being a publicly traded company – like easier access to capital – with fewer drawbacks, like the "distraction" of doing the actual IPO and the bother of the quarterly, short-term view of investors, Social Capital Hedosophia explained in the documents it filed with the SEC.

This tactic also gives public investors access to the wealth being created by well-performing private tech companies. Right now most of that wealth is going to a small pool of investors, mainly the VCs and private equity firms that get invited to the investment table.

As of May 2017, Social Capital Hedosophia estimates there are about 150 tech startups valued at over $1 billion, compared to about 200 public technology companies with a market cap of $1 billion. In years past, those 150 companies would have become public companies. Today, they can hold out as private companies indefinitely because there's so much money available to fund their growth from private investors.

Such "blank-check" public companies, which raise money first and then figure out how to invest it, are currently in vogue, reports The Wall Street Journal's Maureen Farrell. Twenty-two such funds hve been launched on US exchanges so far this year, raising $6.9 billion, according to Dealogic, Farrell reports.

That's not to say that one by Palihapitiya will succeed in picking tech companies that will make its investors wealthy. But it is being backed by a who's who in the Valley circles. Social Capital partner Tony Bates, best known as the former CEO of Skype, is on the holding company's board.

Adam Bain is also on the board. Bain is the well-liked former COO of Twitter who has been relishing in time off from a full-time job since he left Twitter in November. Bain has been advising startups and doing some other investments and board work, such as joining the board of sneaker company Goat last summer. There's been a lot of speculation as to which company will finally talk Bain out of his retirement and back into an exec role.

But Palihapitiya will be CEO of Social Capital Hedosophia. He's well known as one of the original executives of Facebook and an owner/board member of the Golden State Warriors. As an investor, he's backed companies like Box, Palantir, Pure Storage, Slack and Yammer.

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