GigCapital (Avi Katz)

#105 of 117

48/100Weak recordhigh confidence

48/100 from 6 resolved vehicles (6 closed, 0 failed), 55% of the raw 47 after small-sample shrink, completion credit gated ×0.70 by the measured post-close record. Confidence: high. Tier capped at 'weak': measured weak record: median post-close return -90% across 6 measured prior vehicles (rule: ≤ -80% over ≥2).

Label capped at “Weak record” — measured weak record: median post-close return -90% across 6 measured prior vehicles (rule: ≤ -80% over ≥2). The number itself is untouched: caps only stop the word being wrong, they never move points.

Vehicles

1 in the live DB · 6 SEC-verified priors · computed by SpacBrain from cited rows, as of 2026-09-10

Resolved

6 closed · 0 liquidated · 0 terminated

Best priced exit

-27.5%

Kaleyra vs the $10.00 baseline

Worst priced exit

-98.1%

QTI vs the $10.00 baseline

Sponsor DNA

what has happened before, with its sample size

Completion rate100%n=6 resolved vehiclesderived
Of the 6 vehicles this sponsor has taken to a final outcome, 6 closed a business combination.
Liquidation rate0%n=6 resolved vehiclesderived
0 of those 6 returned the trust to holders and wound up without a deal.
Median post-close return-89.6%n=6 priced completed deSPACsderived
A holder who stayed through one of this sponsor's completed deals has ended up a median -89.6% against the $10.00 trust baseline they could have taken in cash, across the 6 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 terminated0terminated dealscounted
No announced combination on this sponsor’s record has been terminated.
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=670/100
6/6 resolved vehicles closed a deal (100%); 0 liquidated, 0 terminated. Gated ×0.70 by measured post-close quality (20/100): closing deals that ended below trust value is not a completed job, so only 70% 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=7100/100
0 liquidations and 0 terminations across 7 vehicles raised → 0% attrition (terminations 1.25×, stale shells 0.75×).
Post-close outcome quality40% weightn=620/100
4 priced deSPACs vs trust value (prior vehicles against the $10.00 IPO baseline, in-DB vehicles against the trust they filed): median -74%, 1/4 still worth at least half of trust, 1 at under a tenth of it. Worst: QTI -98%. Best: Kaleyra -27%. 2 more delisted with no surviving quote — scored as a total loss (a known outcome, not a gap), with no % invented.
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=10/100
0/1 live vehicle trading at or above the trust value it filed.
Measured weak recordflat penaltyn=60/100
Median post-close return -90% across 6 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 = 47, then pulled 45% of the way back to the neutral 50 for small sample size (6 resolved vehicles) = 48.

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

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

Vehicle	Outcome	Became	vs $10.00	Today	Source
GigCapital IIPO 2017	Completed	Kaleyra	-27.5%	Acquired$7.25 · Oct 10, 2023	0001193125-23-215239
GigCapital2IPO 2019	Completed	UpHealthUPH	listing ended	Delisted	0001193125-24-013508
GigCapital3IPO 2020	Completed	Lightning eMotorsZEV	listing ended	Delisted	0001802749-24-000014
GigCapital4IPO 2021	Completed	BigBear.aiBBAI	-67.3%	Trading$3.27 · Aug 14, 2026	0001193125-24-017579
GigCapital5IPO 2021	Completed	QT ImagingQTI	-98.1%	Trading$2.88 · Aug 14, 2026	0001628280-26-050189
GigCapital7IPO 2024	Completed	Hadron EnergyHDRN	-81.1%	Trading$1.89 · Aug 14, 2026	0001193125-26-342682

4 of 6 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

GIXGigCapital9$10.00Searching$253M

Research profile

synthesized from SEC filings + sourced research

GigCapital — Avi Katz's prolific serial franchise. Prior-vehicle track record (SEC-verified via formerNames): (1) GigCapital I COMPLETED → Kaleyra (2019; acquired by Tata 2023). (2) GigCapital2 COMPLETED → UpHealth (2021; bankrupt). (3) GigCapital3 COMPLETED → Lightning eMotors (2021; bankrupt). (4) GigCapital4 COMPLETED → BigBear.ai (BBAI, NYSE, still listed — the standout). (5) GigCapital5 COMPLETED → QT Imaging (QTI). (6) GigCapital7 COMPLETED → Hadron Energy (HDRN, Nasdaq, 2026). Vehicles 8/9/10 searching. Net: 6 completed deSPACs; weak-to-mixed post-close (UpHealth & Lightning eMotors bankrupt; BigBear.ai the winner). Sources: SEC EDGAR submissions API (formerNames) + full-text search, efts.sec.gov.

— research profile — Dr. Avi Katz is the founder, chairman, and CEO of GigCapital Global, a Palo Alto-based SPAC platform he launched in 2017 after selling his fabless semiconductor company GigOptix (NYSE: GIG) to Integrated Device Technology for $250 million. A graduate of the Israeli Naval Academy with a B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Materials Science from the Technion, Katz spent six years at AT&T Bell Laboratories before moving into executive roles across high-tech companies, including CEO stints at Intransa and Equator Technologies (sold to Pixelworks for $110 million). He holds over 70 U.S. and international patents and has authored more than 350 scientific works. GigCapital markets itself under a "Private-to-Public Equity (PPE)" and "Mentor-Investor" methodology, positioning its approach as more hands-on than a conventional SPAC, with an emphasis on guiding late-stage private companies through and beyond the de-SPAC process.

The first vehicle, GigCapital1, raised $143.75 million in December 2017 and merged with Italian CPaaS company Kaleyra in November 2019. Subsequent deals include GigCapital3's merger with electric vehicle maker Lightning eMotors (ZEVY) in May 2021, GigCapital4's merger with AI specialist BigBear.ai (BBAI) in December 2021, and GigCapital5's combination with medical imaging firm QT Imaging Holdings (QTIH) in October 2021. GigCapital7 raised $200 million in September 2024 and is pending a merger with micro-reactor developer Hadron Energy. GigCapital8 raised $220 million in October 2025 and has signed a letter of intent with Quantisimo Corp., a WISeKey/SEALSQ vehicle targeting a consolidated $2 billion quantum platform. The latest vehicle, GigCapital9 (NASDAQ: GIX), priced a $220 million IPO in January 2026 (closing at $253 million with over-allotment), targeting aerospace and defense, cybersecurity, quantum systems, and AI/ML companies.

Katz's board compositions across the GigCapital vehicles draw heavily on military, defense, and technology figures, including retired admirals David Ben-Bashat and Omri Dagul, retired General Avi Mizrachi, Ambassador Adrian Zuckerman, and seasoned technology executives like Bryan Timm and Luis Machuca. Christine Marshall serves as CFO across multiple vehicles. The sponsor has evolved its deal structure over time, more recently using rights instead of warrants—each unit in GigCapital9 comprises one share plus one-fifth of a right—to reduce complex derivative accounting while still offering a path to additional equity. D. Boral Capital has served as sole bookrunner on the most recent offerings, with DLA Piper as legal counsel.

While the sources do not detail post-deal stock performance or redemption rates, some cautionary signals are visible. GigCapital6 reportedly slashed its planned IPO size by 43% in early 2022, cutting $150 million from its target, suggesting difficulty attracting capital in…

1 sentence withheld from the text above. It stated a vehicle count (nine vehicles) that does not reconcile with the record we counted: 7 vehicles — 1 in the live database and 6 SEC-verified prior vehicles. Neither side has been corrected here, and the stored research is unchanged; a count we cannot reconcile is not a count we will publish.

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.

GigCapital (Avi Katz) — 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: "…-verified via formerNames): (1) GigCapital I (CIK 0001719489)" · "…019; acquired by Tata 2023). (2) GigCapital2 (CIK 0001770141)" · "…→ UpHealth (2021; bankrupt). (3) GigCapital3 (CIK 0001802749)" · "…ng eMotors (2021; bankrupt). (4) GigCapital4 (CIK 0001836981)" · "…till listed — the standout). (5) GigCapital5 (CIK 0001844505)" · "…OMPLETED → QT Imaging (QTI). (6) GigCapital7 (CIK 0002023730)"

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.