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Churchill Capital (Michael Klein)

#114 of 117
46/100Weak recordhigh confidence

46/100 from 12 resolved vehicles (7 closed, 5 failed), 71% of the raw 45 after small-sample shrink, completion credit gated ×0.76 by the measured post-close record. Confidence: high. Tier capped at 'weak': measured weak record: median post-close return -90% across 5 measured prior vehicles (rule: ≤ -80% over ≥2).

Label capped at “Weak record” — measured weak record: median post-close return -90% across 5 measured prior vehicles (rule: ≤ -80% over ≥2). The number itself is untouched: caps only stop the word being wrong, they never move points.

Vehicles
15
6 in the live DB · 9 SEC-verified priors · computed by SpacBrain from cited rows, as of 2026-09-11
Resolved
12
7 closed · 4 liquidated · 1 terminated
Best priced exit
+28.6%
INFQ vs the $10.00 baseline
Worst priced exit
-95.9%
SKIL vs the $10.00 baseline

Sponsor DNA

what has happened before, with its sample size
  • Completion rate58%n=12 resolved vehiclesderived

    Of the 12 vehicles this sponsor has taken to a final outcome, 7 closed a business combination.

  • Liquidation rate33%n=12 resolved vehiclesderived

    4 of those 12 returned the trust to holders and wound up without a deal.

  • Median post-close return-90.5%n=5 priced completed deSPACsderived

    A holder who stayed through one of this sponsor's completed deals has ended up a median -90.5% against the $10.00 trust baseline they could have taken in cash, across the 5 vehicles we can price. Measured at the last close we hold, not at a fixed anniversary.

  • 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 terminated2terminated dealscounted

    2 announced combinations have been terminated on this sponsor's record — 1 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.

5 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=1244/100

    7/12 resolved vehicles closed a deal (58%); 4 liquidated, 1 terminated. Gated ×0.76 by measured post-close quality (26/100): closing deals that ended below trust value is not a completed job, so only 76% 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×.

  • Liquidation / termination drag16% weightn=1565/100

    4 liquidations and 1 termination across 15 vehicles raised → 35% attrition (terminations 1.25×, stale shells 0.75×).

  • Post-close outcome quality40% weightn=526/100

    5 priced deSPACs vs trust value (prior vehicles against the $10.00 IPO baseline, in-DB vehicles against the trust they filed): median -90%, 1/5 still worth at least half of trust, 3 at under a tenth of it. Worst: SKIL -96%. Best: INFQ +29%. 2 other completion(s) not priced (2 no stored price) — left OUT of the ratio, not guessed.

  • 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=2100/100

    2/2 live vehicles trading at or above the trust value they filed.

  • Measured weak recordflat penaltyn=50/100

    Median post-close return -90% across 5 measured prior vehicles (threshold -80% over ≥2) → tier capped at 'weak'. No point deduction: these outcomes are already charged through outcome quality and the completion gate.

How the number is built: weighted mean of the six components above = 45, then pulled 29% of the way back to the neutral 50 for small sample size (12 resolved vehicles) = 46.

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 high.

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

9 SEC-verified — what happened to holders who stayed in
VehicleOutcomeBecamevs $10.00TodaySource
Churchill Capital Corp IIPO 2018CompletedClarivateCLVT-80.7%Trading$1.93 · Aug 14, 20260001144204-19-021632 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Churchill Capital Corp IIIPO 2019CompletedSkillsoftSKIL-95.9%Trading$8.27 · Aug 14, 20260001104659-22-027521 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Churchill Capital Corp IIIIPO 2020CompletedClaritev (MultiPlan)CTEV-90.5%Trading$38.12 · Aug 14, 20260001104659-20-106245 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Churchill Capital Corp IVIPO 2020CompletedLucid GroupLCID-93.8%Trading$6.22 · Aug 14, 20260001628280-26-052548 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Churchill Capital Corp XIPO 2025CompletedInfleqtionINFQ+28.6%Trading$12.86 · Aug 14, 20260001193125-26-224350 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Churchill Capital Corp VIPO 2020Liquidated———0000950142-23-002690 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Churchill Capital Corp VIIPO 2021Liquidated———0000950142-23-002960 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Churchill Capital Corp VIIIPO 2021Liquidated———0001104659-24-095018 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Churchill Capital Corp IX/CaymanIPO 2024Terminated———0001193125-26-165149 opens on sec.gov in a new tab

5 of 9 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

Research profile

synthesized from SEC filings + sourced research

Churchill Capital — Michael Klein's platform. Prior-vehicle track record (SEC-verified): (1) Churchill Capital Corp I COMPLETED → Clarivate Analytics (CLVT, 2019; confirmed via joint 425 filings). (2) Churchill II COMPLETED → Skillsoft (SKIL, NYSE). (3) Churchill III COMPLETED → MultiPlan, now Claritev (CTEV, NYSE). (4) Churchill IV COMPLETED → Lucid Group (LCID, Nasdaq). (5) Churchill X COMPLETED → Infleqtion (INFQ, 2026). LIQUIDATED (25-NSE + 15-12G): Churchill V (2023), Churchill VI (2023), Churchill VII (CorpAcq deal DEFM14A 2024-06 collapsed, liquidated 25-NSE 2024-08). Net: 5 completed deSPACs, 3 liquidations; headline win Lucid. Mixed post-close. Sources: SEC EDGAR submissions API (formerNames) + full-text search, efts.sec.gov.

— research profile — Churchill Capital is one of the most prolific SPAC platforms in the market, founded and led by Michael Klein, a veteran dealmaker and former Citigroup executive who spent more than two decades at Citi and its predecessors, ultimately running the institutional clients group. Klein serves as Chairman, CEO, and President across the Churchill vehicles, and is also the founder and Managing Partner of M. Klein and Company, a New York-based merchant bank he established in 2012 that has advised on transactions valued in excess of $1 trillion. He is joined by CFO Jay Taragin, who also serves as CFO of M. Klein and Company. Klein's advisory relationships are a structural differentiator: the merchant bank earns fees from sovereigns and corporates—including a notable role advising Saudi Aramco on its $100 billion downstream restructuring—while deploying SPAC capital into affiliated transactions, creating a proprietary deal-sourcing pipeline unavailable to most financial sponsors. Klein has personally structured more SPACs than any other individual sponsor, with the Churchill series beginning in 2018 and spanning at least thirteen vehicles that have collectively raised billions of dollars.

Klein's track record across completed de-SPAC transactions is mixed but includes several high-profile deals. Churchill Capital Corp I merged with Clarivate in 2019 in a $4.2 billion combination, and Churchill Capital Corp III merged with MultiPlan (now Claritev, NYSE: CTEV) in 2020, which has returned approximately 75% from its $10 offer price. The most widely known deal, Churchill Capital Corp IV's $11.75 billion merger with EV maker Lucid Motors (LCID) in 2021, has been a significant laggard, trading roughly 41% below its offer price. Churchill Capital Corp X merged with quantum computing developer Infleqtion (INFQ) in February 2026, up approximately 33%, and AltC Acquisition merged with SMR developer Oklo (OKLO) in 2024. Churchill Capital XI, which raised an upsized $414 million in December 2025, has announced a pending $2.5 billion merger with Agility Robotics, while Churchill Capital IX has a pending merger with autonomous trucking software developer PlusAI. On the negative side, Churchill Capital Corps V, VI, and VII all liquidated without completing a business combination, representing a notable failure rate among the middle-numbered vehicles. Klein has also led the creation of seven NYSE-listed companies—Clarivate, MultiPlan, Skillsoft, and four Churchill entities—valued in excess of $35 billion.

The most recent vehicles continue Klein's pattern of upsized, sector-agnostic raises with Citi as sole bookrunner. Churchill Capital XII priced an upsized $360 million IPO in April 2026, and Churchill Capital XIII followed with another upsized $360 million offering in August 2026 (up from a planned $300 million), trading on Nasdaq under XIIIU. Klein disclosed a 25.47% stake in Churchill XIII through Churchill Sponsor XIII LLC, comprising 13.8 million Class B founder…

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.

Churchill Capital (Michael Klein) — 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: "…(SEC-verified): (1) Churchill Capital Corp I (CIK 0001744895)" · "…med via joint 425 filings). (2) Churchill II (CIK 0001774675)" · "… → Skillsoft (SKIL, NYSE). (3) Churchill III (CIK 0001793229)" · "… now Claritev (CTEV, NYSE). (4) Churchill IV (CIK 0001811210)" · "… Lucid Group (LCID, Nasdaq). (5) Churchill X (CIK 0002007825)" · "… LIQUIDATED (25-NSE + 15-12G): Churchill V (CIK 0001812234" · "…ill V (CIK 0001812234, 2023), Churchill VI (CIK 0001828250" · "…l VI (CIK 0001828250, 2023), Churchill VII (CIK 0001828248"

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.