Chamath Palihapitiya And Nine Other New Billionaires Minted By The SPAC Frenzy Share to Facebook Share to Linkedin Chamath Palihapitiya, Austin Russell and Mat Ishbia are all new to this year's list thanks to SPACs. Brendan McDermid/Reuters/Newscom, Michael Prince for Forbes, Jacob Lewkow for Forbes SPAC IPOs have raised $180 billion since the beginning of 2020, helping both sponsors and founders get rich quickly, but the boom has yielded relatively few new billionaires. Taking a company public has long been a symbol of success for an entrepreneur, and Wall Street’s favorite craze of the last 12 months helped numerous founders reap the monetary rewards of an IPO while enduring a fraction of the bureaucratic red tape.