A SPAC trust account is a segregated account — held by an independent trustee, usually at a bank like Continental Stock Transfer or Equiniti — into which nearly all of the SPAC's IPO proceeds are deposited on day one. The money is invested in short-term U.S. Treasuries or a government money-market fund, and neither the sponsor nor management can touch it. It exists for exactly one reason: to make sure public shareholders can always get their cash back before being forced into a deal they didn't choose.
That account is why a SPAC share is not like a normal stock. Behind every public share sits a pro-rata claim on real cash. When people say a SPAC has a "floor," this is the cash they mean — though, as we'll see, the floor is really the right to that cash, not the cash itself.
What goes in
When a SPAC IPOs, it sells units (a share plus, often, a fraction of a warrant or right — see units, warrants and rights explained) at $10.00 each. Typically 100% or slightly more of that $10.00 goes straight into trust:
- Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. VI (IPFX) raised $253 million in March 2026 and placed $10.00 per unit in trust, per its IPO prospectus (SEC accession 0001213900-26-035878).
- Many SPACs overfund: the sponsor tops the trust up to $10.05 or $10.10 per unit out of its own pocket, so the account starts above the IPO price.
The sponsor's own at-risk capital (the private placement it buys alongside the IPO) funds the gap between what the trust receives and what underwriters and lawyers are paid. Day-to-day operating costs come from a separate working-capital account — not from the trust.
What it earns
The trust isn't idle cash; it earns whatever short-term Treasuries yield. That interest accrues to shareholders and shows up as a slowly rising trust value per share — the number our screener tracks for every SPAC from quarterly SEC filings.
Real, verified outcomes from redemption events we've recorded:
| SPAC | IPO'd | Paid out per share | Source (SEC accession) |
|---|---|---|---|
| SBXD | Aug 2024 | $10.85 (Aug 2026) | 0001104659-26-095033 |
| CUB | Jun 2024 | $10.88 (Jun 2026) | 0001213900-26-070247 |
| RENEF | May 2022 | $12.50 (Jul 2026) | 0001104659-26-090343 |
RENEF is the extreme case: four years of Treasury interest plus sponsor extension deposits turned $10.00 into $12.50. Time in trust is not dead money.
The only three ways money comes out
The trust agreement — a real contract filed with the SEC — permits withdrawals in exactly three situations:
- Redemption. At certain events (a merger vote, an extension vote, a tender offer), each public shareholder may hand shares back for their exact slice of the trust. This is the mechanism that makes the floor real — walk through it step by step in how SPAC redemption works.
- Closing a deal. Whatever cash remains after redemptions transfers to the merged company at closing.
- Liquidation. If no deal happens before the final deadline, the SPAC dissolves and the whole trust is returned to public shareholders. Warrants and rights expire worthless; the sponsor loses its investment.
Most charters also allow small withdrawals for taxes owed on the interest, and a capped amount (commonly up to $100,000) for dissolution expenses. Those are the fine-print deductions that can shave a cent or two off the final payout.
What the trust does not protect
Three honest caveats, because this is where investors actually lose money:
- The floor is the redemption right, not the account. Once your last chance to redeem passes, the cash may still sit in trust, but you no longer have the option to claim it. A share can then trade far below "trust value" with no way to close the gap — we've tracked a real case at a 40.9% discount that was a trap, not a bargain. That failure mode has its own article: the floor disappears.
- Warrants and rights have no claim on trust. Only public shares redeem. Everything else in the unit dies at liquidation.
- Founder shares don't participate. The sponsor's 20%-ish promote (see the sponsor promote explained) waives trust rights entirely — that's part of the deal that makes the structure work.
How to verify a trust balance yourself
Don't take anyone's word for it, including ours. Every SPAC reports "Investments held in Trust Account" on the balance sheet of its quarterly 10-Q, and the per-share redemption value is stated in every merger or extension proxy. Our per-share figures come from those filings via the SEC's structured (XBRL) data — for example, D. Boral ARC Acquisition I (BCAR) reported $10.26 per share as of March 31, 2026. The arithmetic for doing it by hand is in how to compute NAV yourself.
If you only remember one thing: the trust account is the reason SPAC shares have a floor, and the redemption calendar is the reason the floor has an expiry date. Both halves matter.