SPAC King Palihapitiya Goes Silent With His Empire Shriveling

The news came with little fanfare. It was late on a sleepy summer afternoon last week, and few on Wall Street even seemed to notice the pair of filings when they hit the SEC website.

In terse, boilerplate language, the documents stated that two SPACs launched by Chamath Palihapitiya needed to push back the deadlines they had set to make acquisitions.

Palihapitiya was in no mood to trumpet the news. There were no tweets, no interviews, none of the braggadocio that came with so many of his big SPAC deals, back when the market was the hot new ...