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Distinct shells carrying a filed role for this person — not every shell they have ever touched.
SEC-verified vehicles of the same sponsor, predating these roles and carrying none of them. The badge counts them; the figure beside this one does not.
Mergers closed across all 3 — these vehicles and the franchise's earlier ones together.
Announced but not closed, and still hunting — again over all 3.
No closed vehicle here has both a stored price and a filed trust value to score it against.
2 vehicles on file, newest listing first
6 of 6 appear on more than one
Joseph Hernandez is an American entrepreneur, investor, and biotechnology executive who currently serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Blue Water Acquisition Corp. IV (NYSE: BWIV.U), a healthcare-focused special purpose acquisition company that priced its $130 million IPO on March 19, 2026, with BTIG as left-lead underwriter. He is also the Founder and Senior Managing Partner of Blue Water Venture Partners, LLC, a New York-based investment firm he established in 2017 that backs groundbreaking medical technologies and companies across biotechnology, healthcare, and advanced technology sectors. Hernandez has founded or led more than a dozen entrepreneurial companies over his career and has taken multiple companies public on NASDAQ, ringing both the opening and closing bells numerous times. In addition to his corporate roles, he is a candidate for New York City Mayor in the November 2025 general election and for New York State Comptroller in the June 2026 primary election.
Hernandez began his career at Merck & Co. in sales and marketing from 1998 to 2001, then moved to Affymetrix in Silicon Valley from 2001 to 2003, where he oversaw the launch of more than a dozen gene-based diagnostic products that contributed to the early development of personalized medicine. He subsequently joined Digene Corporation in senior management from 2003 to 2005, where he played a pivotal role in commercializing the world's first FDA-approved molecular diagnostic test for human papillomavirus (HPV), a major milestone in cervical cancer prevention that ultimately led to Digene's $1.6 billion acquisition by Qiagen in 2007. In 2004, he founded Innovative Biosensors, Inc., serving as President and CEO until 2009, and he testified before a U.S. House subcommittee in 2009 on technology and government contracting. He later served as President and CEO of Signal Genetics from 2010 to 2012 and as Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark from 2012 to 2013. He founded and chaired Microlin Bio from August 2013 to January 2017, chaired Ember Therapeutics (OTCMKTS: EMBT) from April 2014 to January 2019, and chaired Sydys Corporation from May 2016 to January 2019.
In 2018, Hernandez founded Blue Water Biotech (later Blue Water Vaccines), an early-stage biotechnology company developing a universal influenza vaccine in partnership with the University of Oxford, and he served as its Chairman and CEO from 2019 to 2023, taking the company public in 2022. In January 2020, he founded Noachis Terra, Inc., a COVID-19 vaccine company that he sold to Oragenics (NYSE: OGEN) in May 2020. From May 2020 to September 2021, he served as Chairman and CEO of Blue Water Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ: BLUW), the first SPAC in the Blue Water family, which completed its IPO in December 2020 and consummated a business combination with Clarus Therapeutics on September 9, 2021; Hernandez subsequently served as a director of the post-combination entity Clarus Therapeutics Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: CRXT), sitting on its Audit and Compensation Committees. He also led Blue Water Acquisition Corp. III through a successful IPO on Nasdaq (ticker: BLUWU) in 2025, achieving a $253 million valuation to invest in AI, biotechnology, and healthcare. More recently, in 2023, he founded Energia Power Systems, an energy storage company developed out of Stanford University's research ecosystem focused on next-generation sodium-ion and lithium-ion battery systems; Eternity Biotech; Temple Street Biotech, which is advancing therapeutic approaches to Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions; and Perseus Therapeutics, where he serves as Founder and Chairman. On April 27, 2026, Maha Capital AB entered into a non-binding letter of intent to acquire Blue Water Acquisition Corp. IV in a reverse merger transaction, though the deal was subsequently cancelled on May 15, 2026.
Hernandez holds a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience (1995), a Master of Science in Molecular Genet
This record is keyed to SEC CIK 0001598384 — the identifier this person files under in their own name. Every vehicle above is a filing made under that CIK, so “the same person on two shells” is a fact about an SEC identifier rather than about a name that happens to match.
Roles are the strings the filings used, in the order they were filed. Nothing on this page ranks them, infers seniority, or offers a reason why any two of these names recur — a recurrence is a count, and the filings that produced it are linked beside every row. We also hold 15 institutional-holder rows on these vehicles, under 10 distinct name strings, and none of them is counted across vehicles: that table has no CIK column, and matching holders by name would merge firms that are not the same firm.