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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 2 — these vehicles and the franchise's earlier ones together.
Announced but not closed, and still hunting — again over all 2.
No closed vehicle here has both a stored price and a filed trust value to score it against.
1 vehicle on file, newest listing first
none appears on more than one
Steve Salis is a Washington, D.C.-based serial entrepreneur, investor, and operator who currently serves as Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Sizzle Acquisition Corp. II (NASDAQ: SZZL), a blank-check company that raised $230 million in its April 2025 IPO led by Cantor Fitzgerald. Sizzle Acquisition Corp. II has agreed to merge with Trasteel Holding S.A. in a deal announced in April 2026 valued at approximately $1.136 billion, targeting the European materials sector. Salis also founded and leads the first Sizzle Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ: SZZL), which raised $155 million in its 2021 IPO and successfully merged with European Lithium to form Critical Metals Corp. (NASDAQ: CRML), a nearly billion-dollar lithium battery transaction completed in 2022. Through these SPACs, Salis has demonstrated a track record of identifying and executing complex public market mergers across retail, consumer, hospitality, and now materials sectors.
Beyond his SPAC activities, Salis is the Founder and CEO of Salis Holdings, a private family office and diversified holding company he established in 2015 that invests in and operates a portfolio of consumer, retail, restaurant, and real estate businesses. Through Salis Holdings and its operating arm Catalogue, he owns and operates several notable Washington-area brands including Ted's Bulletin (a modern American eatery with multiple locations), the iconic Kramers bookstore and restaurant, Federalist Pig (a Michelin-recognized barbecue restaurant), Honeymoon Chicken, Sidekick Bakery, and Ensemble, a digital-driven food hall. He also founded 22 Real Estate Holdings, which owns commercial and mixed-use properties across Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Salis began building his hospitality empire in 2012 when he co-founded the fast-casual chain &pizza with Michael Lastoria, serving as CEO from inception until 2015 and remaining the major shareholder until he exited the business in 2019 after scaling it to over 55 locations across five states and D.C.
As an active early-stage venture investor, Salis has made at least 12 investments over an 11-year period, with his most recent disclosed investment in March 2022. His portfolio spans software, fintech, real estate, mental health, and hospitality technology, and includes companies such as Blend Labs (NYSE: BLND), Sourcegraph, Bird, SentiLink, Two Chairs, Pacaso, Rho, Bbot, Community.com, Pacto, and PWRFWD. He is also a Limited Partner at 75 & Sunny. Salis serves on the board of Sizzle Acquisition Corp. alongside directors including Jamie Karson (Vice Chairman), Warren Thompson, David Perlin, and Neil Leibman, with Daniel Lee as CFO and Head of Business Development. The advisory board includes Rick Camac, Nick Salis, Michael Kuchta, Dean Callas, Carlo Vicari, Matt Hull, and Ryan Croft.
Born in 1983 in Nashua, New Hampshire to a working-class family, Salis attended the University of New Hampshire on a basketball scholarship, studying economics and business administration before dropping out after his sophomore year and moving to New York City. There he signed a modeling contract with Boss Models, worked catering jobs, and became a doorman at top Manhattan nightclubs, gaining formative exposure to the hospitality industry. He relocated to Washington, D.C. to launch &pizza and has since built a reputation for identifying, scaling, and transforming heritage and consumer brands into profitable businesses, drawing inspiration from figures such as Bernard Arnault, Francois Pinault, and Todd Boehly. Salis has over 20 years of experience founding, acquiring, developing, and leading restaurant, hospitality, retail, and real estate companies, and is widely recognized across industries for his ability to modernize established brands while maintaining their local community resonance.
This record is keyed to SEC CIK 0001853574 — 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 11 institutional-holder rows on these vehicles, under 6 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.