Who is behind AAC? Ares Management
The people who set Ares Acquisition III up, what they have done before, and what happened to the shareholders who backed their earlier vehicles — every outcome cited to an SEC filing.
Post-close outcome quality: 1 priced deSPAC vs trust value (prior vehicles against the $10.00 IPO baseline, in-DB vehicles against the trust they filed): median -58%, 0/1 still worth at least half of trust, 0 at under a tenth of it. Worst: KDK -58%. n=1, pulled toward neutral.
Mixed record · low confidence — the same inputs always produce the same score.
Track record
The fleet this sponsor runs today, and the SEC-verified fate of every prior vehicle we have traced.
- Ares Acquisition Corp II · 2023→ Kodiak AIKDKCompleted
- Ares Acquisition Corp I · 2021→ X-Energy (deal terminated → liquidated)Terminated
Ares Management — Ares Acquisition Corp series. Prior-vehicle track record (SEC-verified via formerNames): (1) Ares Acquisition Corp II COMPLETED → Kodiak AI (KDK, Nasdaq, 2025). (2) Ares Acquisition Corp I — X-Energy business combination TERMINATED (Nov 2023), then LIQUIDATED (25-NSE 2023-11, 15-12G). Current vehicle AAC (Ares Acquisition Corp III) searching. Net: 1 completed deSPAC, 1 terminated→liquidated. Sources: SEC EDGAR submissions API (formerNames) + full-text search, efts.sec.gov. — research profile — Ares Management Corporation serves as the sponsor of the Ares Acquisition Corporation (AAC) series of special purpose acquisition companies. Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Los Angeles, Ares is a global alternative investment manager with approximately $671 billion in assets under management, operating across credit, private equity, real estate, and real assets. The SPAC vehicles are led by senior Ares executives: David Kaplan, a co-founder of Ares, serves as CEO and Co-Chairman of the AAC vehicles; Michael Arougheti, co-founder and CEO of Ares Management Corporation, serves as Co-Chairman; Jarrod Phillips, CFO and Partner at Ares, serves as CFO of the SPACs; and Allyson Satin, a Partner at Ares, serves as Chief Operating Officer of AACT. Ares has sponsored three SPACs since 2021, producing a mixed track record. The first vehicle, Ares Acquisition Corporation, announced a merger with advanced nuclear reactor developer X-energy, but the parties mutually terminated the agreement in October 2023 citing challenging market conditions and peer-company trading performance. AAC subsequently liquidated, redeeming public shares at approximately $10.79, though an Ares-affiliated vehicle made a private investment to support X-energy's continued growth as a private company. The second vehicle, Ares Acquisition Corporation II, went public in 2023 and completed its business combination with Kodiak AI, a leader in AI-powered autonomous trucking, in September 2025. The deal ascribed a pre-money equity value of approximately $2.
Full sponsor record →Why the sponsor matters
The thirty-second version, for anyone who has never traded a SPAC.
A SPAC is an empty listed company; the sponsor is the only substance it has before a deal. They pick the target, negotiate the terms, and typically hold founder shares — equity they received nearly free — which pay off for them even in deals that lose public holders money. A sponsor’s prior vehicles are the closest thing to evidence about how this one ends.
How the founder-share incentive works is covered in our plain-English guide to the sponsor promote.
In plain English
Cash in trust / trust per sharethe cash the company is holding for each public share
Filed quarterly in the 10-Q's XBRL. It earns interest between filings, so the figure on a given day is slightly higher than the last filed one — where we show that we label it an estimate.
Dilutionhow much of the company new shares take from you
Sponsor promote, PIPE shares, warrants and rights all issue stock that did not pay $10 for it. The headline deal value is before that; the effective value is after.
De-SPACthe day the SPAC becomes the real company
The shares stop being a claim on a pot of cash and start being equity in an operating business. Roughly 80% of recent de-SPACs traded below $10 within a year.