Aug 1 (Reuters) – W3BCLOUD, a technology joint venture between Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), ConsenSys and its founders, agreed on Monday to go public in the United States by merging with a blank check company as part of of a deal that values ​​the combined company at $1.25 billion, including debt.

The deal with Social Leverage Acquisition Corp I is expected to bring up to $345 million in proceeds to the special purpose acquisition company’s (SPAC) trust account, assuming it doesn’t there is no redemption.

W3BCLOUD has commitments of $40 million from ConsenSys, SK Inc and others for new investments and has also reached an agreement with AMD for an additional capital investment of $10 million, each subject to certain conditions.

Founded in 2018, the company is betting on the growing popularity of Web3 by providing storage and compute infrastructure to power the decentralized economy.

Web3 is used to describe a potential next phase of the Internet – decentralized web operation on blockchain technology.

Still, the announcement comes at a difficult time for the SPAC market, once Wall Street’s hottest trend when it peaked in 2020 and early 2021, and is currently facing regulatory hurdles and challenges. investor wariness amid volatile capital markets and poor stock performance of popular companies.

SPACs are publicly traded companies formed with the intention of merging with a private company, which goes public through the merger and is considered an alternative to an IPO.

After the deal closes, the combined operating entity will be led by Sami Issa, CEO of W3BCLOUD, while Joseph Lubin, founder of ConsenSys and co-founder of Ethereum, will remain on the board.

Reporting by Manya Saini in Bangalore; Editing by Aditya Soni and Shailesh Kuber

Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.