Daedalus SPAC signs LOI to take Turkey's HubX public on Nasdaq
Daedalus Special Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: DSAC), a London-based blank-cheque vehicle, has signed a non-binding letter of intent to merge with HubX, a Turkish consumer AI application studio, in a deal that would bring HubX to Nasdaq. The announcement, dated 8 September 2026, comes alongside a separately disclosed investment of up to $75 million that HubX has received in connection with the proposed business combination.
HubX was established in Turkiye in 2022 and operates through autonomous in-house studios, each focused on a specific app vertical and supported by shared central engineering, data analytics and marketing resources. The company says its applications have been downloaded more than 600 million times and reach more than 100 million active users each month. It also claims to host an award-winning AI research centre that was the first to generate output from Google's TPU hardware, an early adoption it says reduced AI image-generation costs by 40%.
The deal
Daedalus co-chief executive Akin Babayigit framed the transaction around a thesis that value in the AI stack is migrating toward the application layer as foundation models become more commoditised. "With a strong management team and proven execution, we believe HubX is well positioned to become a global leader in consumer AI," he said, adding that acquisitions would form a central part of the combined company's growth strategy.
No definitive agreements have been signed. The transaction remains subject to due diligence, shareholder and regulatory approvals, finalisation of the legal structure, and other customary closing conditions. A Form F-4 registration statement containing a proxy statement and prospectus is expected to be filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of any shareholder vote.
Market context
The SPAC route to Nasdaq has become a contested path for international technology companies, particularly those based in jurisdictions where direct listings face additional scrutiny. The broader SPAC market cooled considerably after a wave of 2020-2021 transactions underperformed, and several high-profile de-SPAC mergers have since been withdrawn or resulted in significant post-merger share price declines. Daedalus's primary stated focus is building a diversified portfolio of profitable AI-powered consumer apps, which sets a profitability bar that distinguishes its pitch from earlier growth-at-all-costs SPAC deals, though no financial metrics for HubX have been disclosed.
The consumer AI application market is crowded. Established players including Snap, Google and Meta have embedded generative AI into widely distributed apps, while a generation of dedicated AI app studios competes for the same mobile user base. HubX's cost-reduction claim on inference via Google TPUs, if it holds at scale, could represent a genuine structural advantage in a market where per-user generation costs directly affect margins. However, the company has not published audited financials or named commercial partners beyond its reference to the Google TPU integration.
From a regulatory standpoint, a Nasdaq listing for a Turkiye-based entity will trigger SEC disclosure requirements across financial reporting, executive compensation and related-party transactions. Investors will also watch whether HubX's cross-border data flows across its consumer app portfolio come under scrutiny from EU or UK data protection authorities, given the scale of its user base. The company has not disclosed which jurisdictions account for the majority of its 100 million monthly active users, a figure that will be material to any proxy statement analysis.