Ares Management

#72 of 117

50/100Mixed recordlow confidence

50/100 from 2 resolved vehicles (1 closed, 1 failed), 29% of the raw 49 after small-sample shrink, completion credit gated ×0.90 by the measured post-close record. Confidence: low.

Vehicles

1 in the live DB · 2 SEC-verified priors · computed by SpacBrain from cited rows, as of 2026-09-09

Resolved

1 closed · 0 liquidated · 1 terminated

Best priced exit

-58.4%

KDK vs the $10.00 baseline

Worst priced exit

-58.4%

KDK vs the $10.00 baseline

Sponsor DNA

what has happened before, with its sample size

Completion rate—n=2 resolved vehiclesderived
2 resolved vehicles on record; this rate is published from 3. Below three the percentage can only be 0, 50 or 100 and says less than the counts beside it.
Liquidation rate—n=2 resolved vehiclesderived
2 resolved vehicles on record; this rate is published from 3. Below three the percentage can only be 0, 50 or 100 and says less than the counts beside it.
Median post-close return—n=1 priced completed deSPACderived
1 priced completed deSPAC on record; this median is published from 3. Two points have no middle — a median over them is their mean, and moves with either one.
Median redemption—n=0 redemption events with a stated ratederived
No redemption event with a stated rate on record — absent, which is not the same as zero. Extraction covers part of the universe, so a low count is our coverage as much as the sponsor’s history.
Deals terminated1terminated dealcounted
1 announced combination has been terminated on this sponsor's record — 0 on a live vehicle, 1 on a vehicle that then wound up.
Extension votes on record0extension votescounted
No extension vote extracted for this sponsor. Extraction is partial across the universe, so this is an absence of rows, NOT evidence of zero extensions.

2 of 6 statistics carry a figure for this sponsor. A rate is published from 3 resolved vehicles and a median from 3 observations: two points have no middle, and a rate over two can only be 0, 50 or 100. Counts have no threshold — a count is an observation, not an estimate.

Everything marked derived is arithmetic we did to rows we hold, not a figure any filing states.

What this panel will not tell you, and why (6)›

Median day-one move on announcement
PriceBar holds 2026-05-11 → 2026-08-17 only. Of 83 dated announcements across the whole universe, 16 fall on a day we hold a bar for a scored sponsor’s vehicle, spread over 14 sponsors — one sponsor reaches three observations. A bar that does not exist is not a 0% move.
Pre-vote move
Only 12 deals carry a vote date at all, and exactly 1 of them falls inside the PriceBar window. One observation is an anecdote with a decimal point.
Median time from IPO to announcement
42 IPO→announcement pairs exist, but only six sponsors have two and one has three. Enough for a statistic about the asset class; not for one about a sponsor, which is what this panel claims to be.
Median time from signing to close
Exactly 1 deal in the entire database is CLOSED and carries an announcement date. There is no 2nd observation anywhere to take a median over.
12-month post-deSPAC return
`SponsorPriorVehicle.postCloseReturnPct` is measured at the LAST close we hold, whenever that is — not on a 12-month anniversary. We hold no price history for the resulting companies, so the anniversary price does not exist. The median post-close return above is the honest version of this number and says what it is measured against.
Sponsor capital at risk
Nothing stores it. The only sponsor-economics column we hold is `Deal.promotePct` (founder shares as a percentage of post-IPO shares, on 34 deals under a scored sponsor), and that measures the equity the sponsor got nearly free — the opposite of the dollars it put in. Deriving at-risk capital from a promote percentage would be an invention with a citation stapled to it.

Score breakdown

every component, what it measured, and what it could not

Deal completion20% weightn=245/100
1/2 resolved vehicles closed a deal (50%); 0 liquidated, 1 terminated. Gated ×0.90 by measured post-close quality (40/100): closing deals that ended below trust value is not a completed job, so only 90% of the completion credit is earned. Full credit resumes at outcome quality 50/100 (the median deSPAC ending at trust value); the gate can never exceed 1×. Small sample — the shrink below keeps this near neutral.
Liquidation / termination drag16% weightn=358/100
0 liquidations and 1 termination across 3 vehicles raised → 42% attrition (terminations 1.25×, stale shells 0.75×).
Post-close outcome quality40% weightn=140/100
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.
Redemption behaviour10% weightnot measurable
No redemption events extracted for this sponsor yet (coverage is partial) — held neutral; absence of rows is NOT evidence of zero redemptions.
Held at the neutral 50 across its full 10% weight — missing data is never scored as a failure, but it never earns credit either.
Extension reliance8% weightnot measurable
No extension filings extracted for this sponsor — held neutral (partial coverage, not a clean record).
Held at the neutral 50 across its full 8% weight — missing data is never scored as a failure, but it never earns credit either.
Live fleet vs trust6% weightn=1100/100
1/1 live vehicle trading at or above the trust value it filed.
Measured weak recordflat penaltyn=1not measurable
Only 1 measured prior vehicle (median -58%) — one vehicle is an anecdote, not a record; the rule needs ≥2.

How the number is built: weighted mean of the six components above = 49, then pulled 71% of the way back to the neutral 50 for small sample size (2 resolved vehicles) = 50.

2 components are not measurable for this sponsor (redemption behaviour, extension reliance) — 18% of the weight is a neutral placeholder rather than evidence. That is why the confidence chip reads low.

How the Sponsor Score worksoutcome-first weighting

The score answers one question: did this sponsor make money for the people who held through the merger? Not “did they get a deal signed”. Those are different questions, and most sponsor rankings quietly answer the second one.

So post-close outcome quality carries 40% — the realised return of every prior vehicle we can price from a primary filing, measured against the $10.00 trust baseline. Deal completion carries 20%, and it is gated: closing deals that ended below trust value only earns part of the completion credit, because closing is a precondition for a return, not a return. Liquidation and termination drag takes 16%, redemption behaviour 10%, extension reliance 8%, and what the tape says about the live fleet just 6% — a quote is an opinion, not evidence.

A component with no data is never guessed. It is held at the neutral 50 across its full weight and labelled “not measurable”. Dropping it and re-weighting the rest would quietly reward a sponsor for having no verifiable record — exactly backwards. The consequence: a sponsor with no post-close evidence at all cannot read above 71, and cannot be labelled a strong operator no matter how many deals it closed.

Experience never inflates the score. There is no “years in business” component. A first-time sponsor sits at exactly 50 and reads “unproven” with low confidence — new is not bad. Sample size only pulls a score toward or away from that neutral 50, so nobody is called great or terrible on one vehicle.

Every input is a row already in the database, sourced from SEC primary filings: prior vehicles verified on EDGAR, redemption results read out of 8-Ks, prices from public feeds. The arithmetic is deterministic — no model, no LLM, no judgement call. Research tooling, not investment advice.

Prior vehicles

2 SEC-verified — what happened to holders who stayed in

Vehicle	Outcome	Became	vs $10.00	Today	Source
Ares Acquisition Corp IIIPO 2023	Completed	Kodiak AIKDK	-58.4%	Trading$4.16 · Aug 14, 2026	0001628280-26-054331
Ares Acquisition Corp IIPO 2021	Terminated	X-Energy (deal terminated → liquidated)	—	—	0001143313-23-000162

1 of 2 prior vehicles carry an honest post-close price, split-adjusted against the $10.00 trust baseline a holder gave up at the merger. Cash buyouts are read from the per-share consideration stated in the DEFM14A / SC 14D-9; a buyout no filing prices stays unpriced and stays out of the score. “Listing ended” means the quote stopped with no buyer — scored as a total loss because that is what the evidence says, but never printed as a percentage we cannot source.

Current fleet

the vehicles running today

AACAres Acquisition III$10.06Searching$345M

Research profile

synthesized from SEC filings + sourced research

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.

Data provenance & audit trail1 internal entry

Written by SpacBrain’s data agents whenever a figure is captured, corrected or flagged, and kept verbatim so every number on this page can be traced back to the filing that states it. This is a running log, not the current record: an early entry may be superseded by a later correction — the panels above always hold the current values.

Ares Management — sponsor record

NOTE-SEAL2026-08-15

Raw SEC identifiers lifted out of the public prose above (the sentences are unchanged); verbatim, each shown with the words it followed: "…a formerNames): (1) Ares Acquisition Corp II (CIK 0001853138)" · "…, Nasdaq, 2025). (2) Ares Acquisition Corp I (CIK 0001829432)"

The Sponsor Score is a deterministic research heuristic over primary-sourced rows — never a recommendation, and never a prediction. It cannot tell you whether this sponsor’s next deal will work; it tells you, precisely and with its own uncertainty attached, what the last ones did.