Phoenix Suns star Kevin Durant and his fellow investors in a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, will wind down and dissolve the entity after being unable to consummate a merger deal with a target company.
Durant — who was playing for the Brooklyn Nets at the time — and his partners set up their SPAC, known as Infinite Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: NFNT), back in 2021, looking to invest in "companies in sectors such as sports, health, e-commerce, food and cryptocurrency," according to its SEC filings.
In late 2021, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, SPACs were all the rage when the initial public offering market had dried up and private companies were looking for a quick way to get listed on Wall Street. SPACs are also known as "blank check" companies.
In a regulatory filing on Oct. 23, Infinite Acquisition said its board had agreed to redeem all of its outstanding Class A by Nov. 6, having passed its self-imposed deadline for finalizing a merger deal. In August, the firm's shareholders had agreed to extend its original merger deadline to Oct. 23, but ultimately no deal could be finalized.
Durant had set up the Infinite Acquisition SPAC with Rich Kleiman, his partner in his Thirty Five Ventures investment firm. They set up the SPAC shortly after they saw success in backing a separate SPAC deal when after-market ticketing company SeatGeek successfully merged with another SPAC to go public in a deal valued at $1.3 billion.
Durant's investment firm had backed Robinhood
Durant was particularly active with Thirty Five Ventures, his New York City-based venture capital fund, in late 2021. Durant and Chris Paul, then a member of the Suns, also were part of the investor group that bought into Chicago sports gambling startup Betsperts. Durant and Paul were briefly teammates on the Suns after the blockbuster trade that brought the Nets' star to Phoenix earlier this year, with Paul subsequently joining the Golden State Warriors prior to the start of the 2023-2024 NBA season.
Thirty Five Ventures was also a backer of online retail investment platform Robinhood.
With Durant's star power backing the Infinite Acquisition SPAC, its initial share offering was oversubscribed when it came to market in November 2021, SEC filings show.
The firm raised $276 million in its IPO, upsized from its original target of a $200 million capital raise when it was looking to sell 20 million units at $10 apiece.
The SPAC set the per-share redemption price at $10.78. The company's shares finished trading on the NYSE effective Oct. 23, closing at $10.80, and will be delisted after the final paperwork is processed by the exchange.
In its Oct. 23 filing, Infinite Acquisition said that after having already redeemed much of the investors' holdings, it still had $86.3 million remaining in its trust, and that it will "retain $100,000 of the interest and dividend income generated by the trust account to pay dissolution expenses."
Several Valley companies took advantage of a SPAC merger to go public between 2020 and 2021 amid the pandemic, starting with electric- and hydrogen-powered semi-truck maker Nikola Corp. (NYSE: NKLA), followed by Chandler-based Offerpad (NYSE: OPAD) and Scottsdale-based SmartRent (NYSE: SMRT).
