Source: eToro and the SPAC company that agreed to take it public are planning to let the June 30 deadline for their merger pass without closing the deal
Context & Ripple Effects
eToro's path to the public markets is collapsing in slow motion. In March 2021 it agreed to go public via SPAC at a $10.4B valuation with $650M raised, but by May 2022 it was instead courting private money at roughly half that price — an $800M-to-$1B round at a $5B-$6B valuation — while its merger deadline sat at June 30.
Letting that deadline pass without closing formally kills the deal structure, though not necessarily the ambition: the corpus shows eToro ultimately scrapped the SPAC entirely, took a down round via an Advanced Investment Agreement, and only reached US public investors through a conventional IPO three years later.
First-order effects
- The $10.4B listing is dead on arrival for eToro's existing shareholders, who now face the private-round alternative at a $5B-$6B valuation — a paper markdown of roughly half locked in before any new money closes.
- The unnamed SPAC sponsor loses its target and the fees and warrant economics attached to it, joining a growing set of 2021-vintage blank-check vehicles whose deals are repricing or unwinding.
Second-order effects
- Other SPAC targets watching fintech valuations compress face the same choice eToro just made — renegotiate downward, raise privately, or walk — a dynamic visible in Digital World Acquisition Corp.'s own shareholder-approval struggles over Truth Social.
- Private growth investors gain leverage: eToro's pivot from a $650M SPAC raise to a private round at half the price shifts pricing power toward the funds writing those checks, a pattern that culminated in the 2023 down round at $3.5B.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the 2021 SPAC cohort splits into companies that wait out the cycle for a traditional IPO — as eToro did, exiting at a $4.2B valuation well below its SPAC price — and sponsors left holding cash shells, pushing the SPAC route back toward niche status for companies that cannot access conventional listings.
The trend: The 2021 SPAC wave is unwinding deal by deal, with high-profile targets like eToro choosing down rounds and patient traditional IPOs over forced mergers at inflated prices.