New York, May 28, 2026, 16:04 (EDT)
Andretti Acquisition Corp. II’s Nasdaq-listed Class A shares, POLE, last stood at $10.71 on Thursday, down 0.3%, with just 3,504 shares reported traded and a market value of about $316 million. The tape was thin. The clock was not.
Thursday was a normal U.S. equity session, not a holiday-shortened market day. Nasdaq lists regular stock-market hours at 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET, and its 2026 holiday calendar shows Memorial Day was May 25, with the next U.S. market closure on June 19 for Juneteenth.
That matters because POLE is a SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company — a listed shell that raises cash and then looks for an operating business to buy. Andretti said in its quarterly filing it had not started operations, would not generate operating revenue until after a business combination, and held $246.4 million in marketable securities in its trust account at March 31. Its 23 million public shares carried a $10.71 redemption value.
The central issue is the deadline. Andretti has until Sept. 9 to complete a business combination, and its filing said the company’s liquidity position and possible mandatory liquidation raised “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern — accounting language for whether a company can keep operating. SEC
The last big transaction story already went away. Andretti and StoreDot, the Israeli electric-vehicle battery company, agreed on Feb. 17 to terminate their business combination agreement, and the related side agreements were also ended, a filing showed.
The reversal left earlier deal talk looking stale. When the StoreDot agreement was announced in December, Michael Andretti, a director and special adviser to Andretti Acquisition II, called it a “pivotal moment in the future of electric mobility,” while StoreDot CEO Dr. Doron Myersdorf called the SPAC the “ideal platform and resources” for scaling. Those comments now sit in the background file, not in an active deal. GlobeNewswire
Andretti has since leaned on insider-linked working-capital financing. On April 27, the company amended notes owed to William J. Sandbrook, Michael Andretti and CEO William M. Brown, raising the aggregate principal amount to $4.375 million; the notes bear no interest and are due at a business combination or liquidation.
Ownership filings show the kind of passive institutional money that often appears in SPACs close to redemption value. Barclays reported 1.66 million shares, or 7.0%, in a May 14 Schedule 13G/A, while Goldman Sachs reported 1.14 million shares, or 4.8%, and Wolverine Asset Management reported 1.34 million shares, or 5.66%, in separate filings. A Schedule 13G is a passive ownership disclosure, not a takeover bid.
Broader risk appetite did not move POLE much. The Invesco QQQ Trust, an exchange-traded fund tracking large Nasdaq stocks, was up about 0.9%, while the iShares Russell 2000 ETF, a small-cap proxy, gained about 0.7%. For a pre-deal SPAC, the trust account and deadline usually matter more than the market’s daily swing.
The same cash-like pattern was visible in nearby blank-check peers. Launch One Acquisition traded at $10.81, Lionheart Holdings at $10.81 and Berto Acquisition at $10.49, with light reported turnover in the first two. That is the competitive set for now: not operating companies racing for revenue, but shell companies trying to turn trust cash into a deal.
But the clean SPAC math can break either way. A credible new target, financing commitments and low redemptions could lift the shares above trust value; a weak deal, a failed extension vote, or no transaction by Sept. 9 could leave investors looking mainly at cash redemption. Thin volume also means a small order can make the quote look more decisive than it is.
For now, POLE is less an earnings story than a process trade. The next real catalyst is likely to be a new target, an extension proposal, or a liquidation path. Until then, $10.71 is doing most of the talking.
