Grab has completed its business combination with the blank-cheque company Altimeter Growth Corp and began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker GRAB, in what the company says is the largest-ever United States public listing by a Southeast Asian company. The transaction raised US$4.5 billion in gross proceeds, including a US$4.0 billion private placement the company calls the largest ever raised.

Grab ran the opening bell from Singapore — the company says it was Nasdaq's first such ceremony in Southeast Asia — and says its group chief executive and co-founder, Anthony Tan, was joined on the stage by drivers and merchant partners. Mr Tan said the listing would bring greater attention to the opportunity in the region.

Who the listing reaches

A super app that goes public is valued on its take rate and its growth, but what makes it work is a large number of drivers and small merchants who are not shareholders. Grab's release cites 465 cities in eight countries, one billion transactions completed in the first half of 2021, and US$11.5 billion in gross merchandise value through September — all company figures, and all measures of activity rather than of the income of the people producing it.

The listing also created the GrabForGood Fund, seeded with a donation by Altimeter of a tenth of its sponsor shares, which the company says will support programmes on inequality, access to basic services and disaster relief. That is a small structural gesture next to the question a platform raises: whether the people who deliver its services earn enough to be its customers too, and whether it can keep growing if they do not.

The proceeds give Grab room to expand and to consolidate. They do not settle how the platform treats the labour it depends on, which is a question for regulators in eight countries rather than for a listing.