Why More Growth Companies Are Looking Beyond the Traditional IPO
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Enhanced Games at Resorts World Las Vegas. PHOTO: FACEBOOK@ENHANCEDGAMES
Enhanced Games reached the public markets in less than six months.
In an era where traditional IPOs can take more than a year to complete, the speed of the company’s merger with A Paradise Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ: APAD) stands out, particularly given the significantly tighter regulatory scrutiny surrounding SPAC transactions since 2021.
The transaction highlights why some growth-stage companies are evaluating special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) as a viable alternative to the traditional IPO process.
Led by Dr. Aron D’Souza and backed by investors including Peter Thiel and Christian Angermayer, Enhanced Games announced its Business Combination Agreement with APAD in November 2025. The transaction closed in May 2026, bringing the company to the public markets materially faster than the timeline typically associated with a conventional IPO.
For decades, the traditional IPO has been considered the default route for private companies entering the public markets. But for many high-growth businesses today, the process has become increasingly slow, expensive, and difficult to execute efficiently.
A conventional IPO can take well over a year to prepare, involving extensive audits, regulatory reviews, underwriter coordination, investor roadshows, and careful timing against market conditions. During that period, companies remain exposed to volatility, shifting investor sentiment, and delayed access to capital. According to EY, many companies postponed planned IPOs amid market volatility and uncertainty surrounding U.S. tariff announcements, highlighting how sensitive IPO execution can be to broader market conditions.
For businesses operating in fast-moving industries, timing matters. Delayed access to liquidity can slow expansion, hiring, acquisitions, partnerships, and product development at critical stages of growth.
That is one reason why the merger between Enhanced Games and APAD is notable. The SPAC structure allowed Enhanced Games to negotiate valuation, governance terms, and financing arrangements early in the process, compressing many of the steps normally associated with a conventional IPO into a single transaction.
Enhanced Games operates across sports, media, performance science, and wellness, sectors that require significant upfront investment and rapid execution. Earlier access to public capital provided the company with liquidity, visibility, and strategic flexibility at an important stage of growth.
The public listing also gives the company tradable equity that can potentially support acquisitions, partnerships, athlete compensation structures, sponsorship arrangements, and future fundraising initiatives. These capabilities are particularly relevant in industries evolving as rapidly as sports entertainment, wellness, and human-performance science, where speed itself can become a competitive advantage.
The deal also highlights one of the SPAC market’s core advantages: the ability to combine capital raising and public-market entry within a single process.
Beyond speed, the SPAC structure offered Enhanced Games another major advantage: earlier visibility into valuation.
In a traditional IPO, pricing is largely determined near the end of the process through institutional book-building and investor demand during the roadshow phase. Even late-stage IPO candidates can face valuation cuts, downsized offerings, or postponed listings if market conditions weaken.
Recent IPO markets have repeatedly demonstrated this risk. Instacart went public in 2023 at an approximate US$9.9 billion valuation, which is dramatically below the US$39 billion private valuation it achieved during the 2021 market peak. Similarly, WeWork’s failed IPO attempt became one of the clearest examples of how rapidly investor sentiment can shift during the IPO process.
SPAC mergers operate differently.
Enhanced Games secured an implied enterprise valuation of approximately US$1.2 billion months before closing the transaction. While the merger still required SEC review and shareholder approval, the company gained significantly greater visibility into deal economics much earlier in the process.
That certainty is particularly valuable for growth companies whose valuations are tied more closely to long-term platform potential than near-term profitability.
Rather than relying entirely on shifting IPO market sentiment, the SPAC structure allowed Enhanced Games to negotiate around its broader growth strategy and future expansion plans from the outset.
The Enhanced Games transaction also reinforces why some growth-stage companies evaluate SPACs as an alternative to the traditional IPO process.
Traditional IPO investors often prefer businesses with long operating histories, stable earnings, and predictable growth profiles. Many expansion-stage companies simply do not fit that model yet, even if their long-term opportunities are substantial.
SPACs offer a different pathway.
Instead of waiting years to achieve the operational maturity typically expected in a conventional IPO, companies can access public-market capital earlier while still in growth mode.
For Enhanced Games, early access to the public markets provides more than capital. Public equity can support acquisitions, partnerships, athlete compensation structures, sponsorship arrangements, and future fundraising efforts. These capabilities are particularly important in sectors evolving as rapidly as sports entertainment, wellness, and human-performance science, where speed itself can become a competitive advantage.
The transaction also highlights how the SPAC market has evolved since the speculative boom of 2020 and 2021.
Today’s de-SPAC environment operates under significantly tighter regulatory scrutiny, including enhanced disclosure requirements, greater SEC oversight, and stricter treatment of projections and liability standards.
The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance noted that redemption rates spiked in 2022, in some cases approaching 100%, contributing to a significant slowdown of the SPAC activity.
In response to rising investor concerns and regulatory pressure, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted enhanced SPAC disclosure and liability rules in 2024 designed to align de-SPAC transactions more closely with traditional IPO standards. Sponsors also faced greater pressure to demonstrate financing certainty, stronger disclosures, and more credible post-merger execution.
Enhanced Games completed its transaction within this more disciplined environment.
Its Form S-4 included audited financial statements, governance disclosures, transaction details, and extensive risk-factor analysis subject to SEC review. The company also supplemented SPAC trust proceeds with a separately arranged US$40 million PIPE financing commitment designed to strengthen liquidity and improve deal certainty.
That structure reflects a more institutional and disciplined SPAC market than the speculative wave seen several years ago.
The Enhanced Games transaction demonstrates that, despite tighter regulation and a far more selective market environment, SPACs can offer certain growth companies a practical alternative to the traditional IPO.
For businesses prioritising speed, capital access, and execution certainty, a well-structured de-SPAC transaction may provide a more efficient route to the public markets, particularly when supported by credible financing, disciplined structuring, and strong investor backing.
Keep Reading
From information gaps to global access — how AI is reshaping the pursuit of knowledge.
Updated
January 8, 2026 6:33 PM
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Paper cut-outs of robots sitting on a pile of books. PHOTO: FREEPIK
Encyclopaedias have always been mirrors of their time — from heavy leather-bound volumes in the 19th century to Wikipedia’s community-edited pages online. But as the world’s information multiplies faster than humans can catalogue it, even open platforms struggle to keep pace. Enter Botipedia, a new project from INSEAD, The Business School for the World, that reimagines how knowledge can be created, verified and shared using artificial intelligence.
At its core, Botipedia is powered by proprietary AI that automates the process of writing encyclopaedia entries. Instead of relying on volunteers or editors, it uses a system called Dynamic Multi-method Generation (DMG) — a method that combines hundreds of algorithms and curated datasets to produce high-quality, verifiable content. This AI doesn’t just summarise what already exists; it synthesises information from archives, satellite feeds and data libraries to generate original text grounded in facts.
What makes this innovation significant is the gap it fills in global access to knowledge. While Wikipedia hosts roughly 64 million English-language entries, languages like Swahili have fewer than 40,000 articles — leaving most of the world’s population outside the circle of easily available online information. Botipedia aims to close that gap by generating over 400 billion entries across 100 languages, ensuring that no subject, event or region is overlooked.
"We are creating Botipedia to provide everyone with equal access to information, with no language left behind", says Phil Parker, INSEAD Chaired Professor of Management Science, creator of Botipedia and holder of one of the pioneering patents in the field of generative AI. "We focus on content grounded in data and sources with full provenance, allowing the user to see as many perspectives as possible, as opposed to one potentially biased source".
Unlike many generative AI tools that depend on large language models (LLMs), Botipedia adapts its methods based on the type of content. For instance, weather data is generated using geo-spatial techniques to cover every possible coordinate on Earth. This targeted, multi-method approach helps boost both the accuracy and reliability of what it produces — key challenges in today’s AI-driven content landscape.
Additionally, the innovation is also energy-efficient. Its DMG system operates at a fraction of the processing power required by GPU-heavy models like ChatGPT, making it a sustainable alternative for large-scale content generation.
By combining AI precision, linguistic inclusivity and academic credibility, Botipedia positions itself as more than a digital library — it’s a step toward universal, unbiased access to verified knowledge.
"Botipedia is one of many initiatives of the Human and Machine Intelligence Institute (HUMII) that we are establishing at INSEAD", says Lily Fang, Dean of Research and Innovation at INSEAD. "It is a practical application that builds on INSEAD-linked IP to help people make better decisions with knowledge powered by technology. We want technologies that enhance the quality and meaning of our work and life, to retain human agency and value in the age of intelligence".
By harnessing AI to bridge gaps of language, geography and credibility, Botipedia points to a future where access to knowledge is no longer a privilege, but a shared global resource.