Nikola Flashbacks Intensify as Einride’s $1.8B Robot Truck SPAC Barrels Toward the NYSE

Wake up babe, a new SPAC just dropped…

If you were tossing and turning last night because you haven’t had the chance to lose money on a new ticker symbol lately… good news, Wall Street’s got fresh meat.

Swedish autonomous trucking startup Einride just rolled out of the tunnel and onto the field… or rather, let its robot semi do it. The company’s going public through a SPAC merger with Legato Merger Corp. III, valuing it at $1.8 billion.

(Source: Wall Street Journal)

The deal is expected to raise $219 million, with another $100 million possibly coming through PIPE investors (aka the suits who haven’t learned their lesson from Nikola yet). And if all goes according to plan, shares will hit the NYSE sometime in the first half of 2026. I think it’s undeniable that the timing’s kinda perfect. SPACs are officially back and transportation tech is where the hype cycle’s heating up again.

If you’ve never heard of Einride, don’t worry… no one’s seen one of their trucks in the wild unless you live near a PepsiCo warehouse or the GE Appliances freight yard. Founded in 2016, the company’s running both electric and fully autonomous fleets… their cars have no steering wheel, pedals, or a driver (obviously).


(Source: CNN)

Better yet, this isn’t one of those startups walking into Shark Tank asking Mr. Wonderful for $1 million while offering up 2.5% equity on $0 sales. They’ve got 25+ customers across seven countries, a $65 million ARR base, and over $800 million in long-term contracts. Their trucks have logged 11 million miles, 1,700 driverless hours, and 350,000 shipments… which already puts them ahead of, say, half the EV SPAC graveyard.

Their U.S. HQ’s in Austin, probably so they can steal all of Tesla’s engineers between breakfast tacos (respect). But jokes aside, this isn’t your average “pre-revenue, pre-product, pre-hope” SPAC. The freight market is a $4.6 trillion beast, and it’s still a diesel-chugging, human-operated circus. Einride’s trying to prove electric trucking isn’t only cleaner… but you know, actually possible.

And they’re backing that up. The company teamed up with DP World to roll out the largest autonomous EV fleet in the Middle East. They’ve also made CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list three years in a row, ranked #24 this year… which sounds awesome, but remember Nikola once had a higher valuation and vehicles that only worked when there was a slope.

That said, they’ve already got a superfan vouching for them… SPAC legend Eric Rosenfeld (the guy behind Legato) swears Einride’s got the goods: “proven customers, real revenue, and tech that actually works.” So there’s that.

As for me, I’m gonna hold my skepticism close to the vest until I actually see some results but I have no doubt this baby will pop on day one. Let’s just hope they learned from Nikola’s CEO.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in General Electric, Pepsi, and Tesla as mentioned in the article.