The company known as Zapata AI took a massive tumble on April 1st, 2024, as its new ticker (ZPTA) rolled out. The company that went to market via Andretti Acquisition Corp faced a massive blow to its share price, tumbling from $15 to under $6 as seen on Google Finance.
Zapata AI completed a business merger with Andretti Acquisition Corp. and will now trade as a public stock on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “ZPTA.” This merger marks a significant step for Zapata AI, which develops industrial generative AI software based on quantum physics algorithms and boasts an impressive client roster that includes major corporations and government agencies.
ZPTA: The Company
Zapata AI specializes in creating generative AI technologies to solve intricate problems at an industrial scale, leveraging quantum physics-based algorithms. Its technology serves diverse clients, including notable enterprises and government agencies. The company’s main products, Zapata AI Sense™ for numerical computations and Zapata AI Prose™ for text analysis work on the Sensor Intelligence Platform, analyzing live data for immediate insights. Their Orquestra architecture integrates with existing systems, facilitating deployment across various cloud environments.
D-Wave and Zapata AI are collaborating to Forge Quantum-Enabled Machine Learning. This intersection is one of the hottest crossovers right now.
Zapata AI went public through a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPA) mechanism, partnering with Andretti Acquisition Corp., led by racing legend Michael Andretti. The SPAC, a blank-check company, merges with Zapata AI, valuing the latter at around $200 million. Andretti was listed with the ticker symbol WNNR, which is now ZPTA.
The Decline in ZPTA Stock Price
Investors will not be happy with the massive one-day loss, which the reasons for, as far as we know, remain unclear. The share price has recovered slightly after hours. Still, it will prove disappointing to those who have long waited for the company to hit the public markets, especially against a backdrop of ever more excitement in Generative AI.
SPAC mergers have been volatile over the last few years and have been heavily punished by investors, and ZPTA could be the latest casualty. Quantum companies that went public, such as D-Wave, Rigetti, and IonQ, have recovered some of their prices from lows in their early days as public companies. Whether this is just a “right of passage” for Zapata AI remains to be seen.
According to Bloomberg: “The vast majority of the SPAC shares were redeemed, meaning the infusion for Zapata was far more modest than the $230 million that the blank-check vehicle raised in its 2022 IPO, filings show. A growing portion of investors choosing to take their original investment back is among the issues plaguing the SPAC market, with completed deals over the past year seeing a median 96% of shares redeemed, SPAC Research data analyzed by Bloomberg News show.”
