General Catalyst
#89 of 117Unproven — 1 vehicle, none resolved yet. Held at the neutral 50; no record is not a bad record.
Sponsor DNA
what has happened before, with its sample size- Completion rate—n=0 resolved vehiclesderived
- Liquidation rate—n=0 resolved vehiclesderived
- Median post-close return—n=0 priced completed deSPACsderived
- Median redemption—n=0 redemption events with a stated ratederived
- Deals terminated0terminated dealscounted
- Extension votes on record0extension votescounted
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)›
Score breakdown
every component, what it measured, and what it could not- Deal completion20% weightnot measurable
No vehicle has reached a final outcome yet — nothing to measure, held neutral.
Held at the neutral 50 across its full 20% weight — missing data is never scored as a failure, but it never earns credit either.
- Liquidation / termination drag16% weightn=1100/100
0 liquidations and 0 terminations across 1 vehicle raised → 0% attrition (terminations 1.25×, stale shells 0.75×).
- Post-close outcome quality40% weightnot measurable
No completed deSPAC yet — nothing to measure, held neutral.
Held at the neutral 50 across its full 40% weight — missing data is never scored as a failure, but it never earns credit either.
- 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 penaltynot measurable
No measured prior-vehicle outcome — the weak-record rule cannot engage (absence of data is never a penalty).
How the number is built: weighted mean of the six components above = 61, then pulled 100% of the way back to the neutral 50 for small sample size (0 resolved vehicles) = 50.
4 components are not measurable for this sponsor (deal completion, post-close outcome quality, redemption behaviour, extension reliance) — 78% 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.
Current fleet
the vehicles running todayResearch profile
synthesized from SEC filings + sourced researchGeneral Catalyst, the sponsor behind GCGR, is one of the most prominent venture capital firms in the United States. Founded in 2000 by Joel Cutler and David Fialkow and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the firm has grown to manage over $43 billion in assets as of late 2024, with some sources citing $45.5 billion by December 2025. The firm has made nearly 2,000 investments across seed, venture, and growth stages, with a portfolio that includes marquee names such as Airbnb, Stripe, Anthropic, Anduril, Samsara, Helsing, Canva, and HubSpot. General Catalyst operates under CEO and Managing Director Hemant Taneja's "responsible innovation" and "unscaling" thesis, leveraging data and AI to transform core societal services. The firm has also expanded aggressively internationally, opening offices in London, Berlin, and Bangalore, acquiring La Famiglia and Venture Highway, and committing $5 billion to India. Beyond traditional venture, General Catalyst has pursued unconventional strategies including acquiring a health system (Summa Health for $485 million), launching an AI roll-up strategy exemplified by a $6.3 billion American Express deal, and partnering with Trian Partners to acquire Janus Henderson in an approximately $8 billion transaction.
The SPAC vehicle, General Catalyst Global Resilience Merger Corp. (GCGR), was incorporated in the Cayman Islands in January 2026 and completed its IPO on May 1, 2026, raising $402.5 million through the sale of 40,250,000 "GRAIL" (Global Resilience Aligned Initial Listing) securities at $10.00 each, underwritten by Citi and listed on Nasdaq under the symbol GCGRU. The vehicle targets aerospace and defense, national security, and associated sectors, drawing on General Catalyst's experience building and investing in technology companies in regulated and mission-critical environments. The firm's portfolio already includes significant defense and security investments such as Anduril, Helsing, Samsara, and Applied Intuition, giving the sponsor deep domain expertise and a pipeline of potential targets. As of June 30, 2026, the trust account held approximately $404.7 million, and the shares traded in a narrow band around $10.00, consistent with typical pre-announcement SPAC behavior. The vehicle has a 24-to-27-month combination period to complete a qualifying business combination.
The leadership team brings substantial capital markets and operating experience. CEO Paul Kwan, a Managing Director at General Catalyst since 2021, leads the firm's Global Resilience strategy and spent over two decades at Morgan Stanley leading West Coast technology banking, advising on IPOs, M&A, and capital markets, and helping pioneer the modern direct listing. CFO Christopher Kauffman, a Partner at General Catalyst since 2022, previously held finance roles at Ruggable, SoftBank Vision Fund, and Golden Gate Capital. Chairman Hemant Taneja, General Catalyst's CEO, holds five degrees from MIT and has led investments across technology, healthcare, and financial services. The board also includes Fareed Zakaria, the CNN host and Washington Post columnist who brings geopolitical expertise relevant to the defense and national security focus, and Barry McCarthy, the former CEO of Peloton and a seasoned public-company executive. Taneja's prior SPAC experience is notable: he served as CEO of Health Assurance Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ: HAAC) from September 2020 to December 2022, giving the sponsor team direct experience with the full SPAC lifecycle.
GCGR's structure is explicitly designed to differentiate itself from conventional SPACs. The GRAIL security architecture is intended to minimize immediate dilution and link sponsor economics to long-term performance, creating what the sponsor describes as stronger alignment with public shareholders. The sponsor's 5,031,250 Class B "Alignment Shares" retain 20% of voting power before a business combination and may convert into Class A shares in tranches after a deal closes, wit
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.