My understanding is that its a shift in the SPAC model that's making them take off recently. In the traditional SPAC model, if the SPAC shareholders choose to

My understanding is that its a shift in the SPAC model that's making them take off recently. In the traditional SPAC model, if the SPAC shareholders choose to redeem their shares, the acquired company gets less money, or the deal just doesn't go through. This actually decreases the certainty to the company of any deal. See the case of Far Point, where COVID hurt the company and the SPAC was able to get out of the deal (in fact, management urged shareholders to vote against the deal they had put together!). Recently, however, SPACs are tending to have small amounts of capital (or at least, few investors), and rely on the PIPEs to make up the difference. As the article points out, the PIPE process isn't too far off from the typical IPO process: your bankers (SPAC management in this case), market the deal to potential investors, and build orders. In my view, as this approaches its limit, SPACs become very similar to IPOs, with one key difference: regulations. They're not required to file S1s and many other restrictions around marketing to investors no longer exist. In other words, as this trend continues, it seems that the main value that SPACs provide is just a way to do IPOs while skirting many of the SECs requirements.