AJAX or AJAX I Acquisition Corp is a SPAC managed by Dan Och (Co-Founder of 50b+ AUM’s Och-Ziff Capital Management Group and Willoughby Capital’s founder/current chairman) and Glenn Fuhrman (Founder of 20b+ AUM’s MSP capital) seeking a merger of an internet, software, fintech, and consumer industry sector. There are some of the major names, and their advisory board is even more stacked: James Morgan—co-founder, Square’s Kevin Systrom—co-founder/former Instagram’s CEO, Steve Ells—founder/former Chipotle’s CEO, Anne Wojcicki—and 23andMe’s co-founder and CEO. There are also a bunch of higher-ups on the management committee from the hedge fund of Dan Och willoughby capital.
Why AJAX could merge with TranferWise
Och’s hedge fund Willoughby Capital’s investments include: Coinbase, Github, Instacart, Robinhood, Chewy, Stripe, TransferWise, and hundreds of other public and private investments in the Och hedge fund. I doubt it’s Stripe because they can be taken public by themselves. On the other hand, TransferWise is a comparatively obscure Fintech unicorn and is also in its hypergrowth process. I’m not going to go through TransferWise’s financials that much because, frankly, I’m not eligible to do so. However I am going to have some simple numbers and a link to the source:
- Revenue for fiscal 2020: £ 302.6 million, up 70 percent from the £ 179 million figure for fiscal 2019.
- 8 million clients globally, up from 6 million or 33 percent in the previous fiscal year .
- Fourth year of profitability in a row
- $5 billion in July 2020 valuation
In addition, it was only recently announced that TransferWise has begun recruiting banks for an IPO (December, 19th). Both conventional or via a SPAC is explicitly not defined, but due to the success/number of SPAC IPOs recently, the SPAC route is strongly suspected.
With the sponsorship of two major players in the hedge fund world, an enticing 10 percent charge rather than the normal 20 percent, and ties already made with TransferWise, with such great leadership in the tech/fintech space, it seems very likely that this will be AJAX’s merging goal.
