Venture-backed real estate startup Opendoor will start trading as a public company today, after its merger with a special purpose acquisition company closed Friday. Even before trading begins, the deal has inspired the kind of investor frenzy that surrounds the hottest IPOs.
By Friday afternoon, investors had bid up the stock price of the SPAC that merged with Opendoor about 150% from its value of around $12 before word of the merger leaked in September. This was one of the biggest increases among firms that completed SPAC mergers this year. As a result, Opendoor, valued at just $6.3 billion when the deal was announced in September, now has a market capitalization of about $18 billion.
