Self-driving truck startup Plus is reportedly seeking to raise up to $600 million via a SPAC merger with Hennessy Capital Investment Corp V

• Self-driving truck startup Plus is set to merge with the SPAC Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. V.
• Plus is hoping to raise up to $600 million in the deal which values the combined entity at over $3 billion.
• Plus was founded in 2016 by Stanford Ph.D. candidates and has raised $520 million over the last five years.

A self-driving truck startup called Plus is seeking to raise up to $600 million in a merger with the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. V, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

The deal could go through as soon as next week, and the combined entity is set to have a valuation of over $3 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

BlackRock, already an investor in Hennessey, is looking to put additional funds into the self-driving truck startup through a private investment in public equity (PIPE) as well, Bloomberg reported.

The Hennessy V SPAC raised $345 million in a January IPO and has been looking for a partner ever since. It trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker "HCICU."

Hennessy V is chief executive Daniel J. Hennessy's fifth special purpose investment vehicle.

The CEO has raised more than $1.5 billion from SPAC IPOs thus far, completing deals with an electric vehicle company called Canoo, a school bus manufacturer called Blue Bird Corp., and a transportation and logistics company called Daseke.

Now Hennessy is looking to link up with Cupertino, California-based Plus which was founded by a group of Stanford Ph.D. candidates including David Liu, Hao Zheng, and Shawn Kerrigan in June of 2016.

The self-driving truck company has raised $520 million from investors like Sequoia China, SAIC Capital, and Quanta Computer over the last five years, according to data from Crunchbase.

Plus focuses on using AI technology to enable large-scale autonomous commercial trucking fleets. It currently boasts some of the only fully functional Level-4 autonomous trucks on the market.

Bloomberg reported Plus recently hired Dennis Mooney from Navistar and Chuck Joseph from Amazon to help scale production and promote the adoption of the company's tech.

Plus also has a partnership with the European truckmaker Iveco SpA and is working with Cummins to create autonomous technology for natural gas trucks.