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Comment by shantocv | Hacker News Reader

This feels like the 2026 version of companies adding "blockchain" to their name in 2017 and watching the stock jump. The shoe business was real — they had a genuinely differentiated product with the merino wool. Pivoting from a physical product with brand recognition to "AI" when you have no obvious AI expertise or data moat is a tough sell beyond the initial hype pop.

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Isn't this just a SPAC?

The shoe business was sold, a shell of a public company was left, and it essentially acquired a brand new company focused on AI.

Yup, that's exactly what it is.

That isn't how I read the article?

But then a company whose only asset is it has a listing should be able to go up by 580% doing not very much.

The announcement was that it secured $50M in financing, sold the shoes business for $39M leaving $20M or so in cash.

An empty public company with $70M in financing to enter a hyped market was valued at $115M. The stated intent is to spend their money on a CapEx item with a fairly high demand and resale value (GPUs) in a sector that has a pretty simple playbook.

The 580% bump is a fun headline, but "startup secures $50M in funding at a 5.8x valuation bump" isn't unheard of.

Have I invested? No. Is this a ridiculously funny narrative and story? Absolutely. Is it the most ridiculous valuation I've seen? No.

That is probably still bad enough too. The SPAC era of 2020 and 2021 was not great [1] and SPACs are normally not the best vehicles [2]

[1]https://certuity.com/insights/what-happened-to-spacs/ [2]https://mergersandinquisitions.com/spac-vs-ipo/

It honestly seems worse.

You can do something similar with any surplus kittens you need to rehome. Don't tell people they're friendly, don't scratch the furniture, are litterbox-trained, and get on well with children and other pets, just say they're quantum AI kittens and they'll practically fly out the door.

Incidentally, if anyone would like to buy a quantum AI Yugo, DM me.

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