Lexington just became home to a nearly $2 billion company. Here’s what they do.
Rubicon Technologies, a Lexington-based business that helps companies better-manage their waste and recycling, announced on Thursday that it is going public through a SPAC merger.
The deal will create a publicly traded company valued at about $1.7 billion, according to the announcement.
Rubicon founder and CEO Nate Morris will continue to lead the new company, which will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and trade under the ticker symbol RBT.
What is a SPAC? It stands for “special purpose acquisition company” and has become a popular business model for issuing publicly traded stock shares rather than as an initial public offering. A SPAC is created as a shell company then merges with an existing business that wants to be publicly traded; typically the SPAC’s only assets are the money raised to “buy” the other company.
Rubicon’s SPAC company name, Founder, includes investments from Palantir Technologies, the New Zealand Super Fund and Rodina Capital, according to the release.
Rubicon — which has been called “Uber for trash” — uses a software platform to link businesses and governments to a network of 8,000 hauling and recycling partners in 20 countries worldwide.
According to Rubicon, the company had in excess of $500 million in revenue in 2019 and 2020; clients include Walmart, Apple, Starbucks, Chipotle and FedEx as well as major U.S. city governments including Kansas City, Mo., Baltimore and Columbus, Ohio.
In June, the company announced that it was moving its global headquarters to Lexington’s City Center.
“Historically, waste has been an overlooked issue but in Rubicon we have built a different kind of company, one that has sought to address the entrenched shortcomings of the industry and bring the issue of waste into the public consciousness,” Morris said in the release. “While the waste and recycling category is highly resilient, it is ripe for improvements in efficiency and sustainability, and the successful execution of our growth strategy will help propel the industry into the current age of digitization while facilitating the broader sustainability goals of customers and communities around the world. In doing so, we are creating a new standard for the waste and recycling category.”
This story was originally published December 16, 2021 at 10:42 AM.
