Lynk’s laboratory in Virginia Photo: Lynk

Lynk Global and blank check company Slam Corp have ended the deal to take Lynk public through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger. Lynk announced Monday the two parties mutually terminated their business combination agreement. 

This comes after Slam Corp filed a complaint against Lynk in a Delaware court in June over the planned merger, and Lynk then filed a counterclaim. Lynk said the parties settled all pending claims and counterclaims in the Delaware court. 

Slam Corp, a SPAC led by former baseball star Alex ‘A-Rod’ Rodriguez, announced plans to take the satellite direct-to-cell startup public in late December 2023, but the merger had been pushed back multiple times. 

“With the Delaware litigation resolved and the [business combination agreement] mutually terminated, Lynk is now better positioned to pursue a broader set of strategic and commercial opportunities that were previously constrained by the agreement,” Lynk CEO Ramu Potarazu said in a statement. “We remain fully focused on executing our long-term vision and, in partnership with the newly merged SES and our global MNO partners, accelerating our mission to deliver mobile connectivity to anyone, anywhere — directly from space.” 

In March, SES invested in Lynk to fund the company’s direct-to-device constellation, relocate its manufacturing to Europe, and serve as a channel partner to distribute D2D connectivity.

Lynk is not the first company with a SPAC deal that didn’t close. Using SPACs to go public largely fell out of favor with space companies after a spree of deals in 2021. Tomorrow.io and World View also canceled SPAC plans in 2022 and 2023.