Gores Group (Alec Gores)

#66 of 117

51/100Mixed recordhigh confidence

51/100 from 12 resolved vehicles (9 closed, 3 failed), 71% of the raw 52 after small-sample shrink, completion credit gated ×0.81 by the measured post-close record. Confidence: high.

Vehicles

2 in the live DB · 12 SEC-verified priors · computed by SpacBrain from cited rows, as of 2026-09-10

Resolved

9 closed · 3 liquidated · 0 terminated

Best priced exit

+242.5%

Hostess Brands vs the $10.00 baseline

Worst priced exit

-95.2%

PSNY vs the $10.00 baseline

Sponsor DNA

what has happened before, with its sample size

Completion rate75%n=12 resolved vehiclesderived
Of the 12 vehicles this sponsor has taken to a final outcome, 9 closed a business combination.
Liquidation rate25%n=12 resolved vehiclesderived
3 of those 12 returned the trust to holders and wound up without a deal.
Median post-close return-52.8%n=9 priced completed deSPACsderived
A holder who stayed through one of this sponsor's completed deals has ended up a median -52.8% against the $10.00 trust baseline they could have taken in cash, across the 9 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=1261/100
9/12 resolved vehicles closed a deal (75%); 3 liquidated, 0 terminated. Gated ×0.81 by measured post-close quality (31/100): closing deals that ended below trust value is not a completed job, so only 81% 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=1479/100
3 liquidations and 0 terminations across 14 vehicles raised → 21% attrition (terminations 1.25×, stale shells 0.75×).
Post-close outcome quality40% weightn=931/100
7 priced deSPACs vs trust value (prior vehicles against the $10.00 IPO baseline, in-DB vehicles against the trust they filed): median -48%, 4/7 still worth at least half of trust, 1 at under a tenth of it. Worst: PSNY -95%. Best: Hostess Brands +243%. 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=2100/100
2/2 live vehicles trading at or above the trust value they filed.
Measured weak recordflat penaltyn=9100/100
Median post-close return -53% across 9 measured prior vehicles — above the -80% weak-record threshold.

How the number is built: weighted mean of the six components above = 52, then pulled 29% of the way back to the neutral 50 for small sample size (12 resolved vehicles) = 51.

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

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

Vehicle	Outcome	Became	vs $10.00	Today	Source
Gores Holdings IIPO 2015	Completed	Hostess Brands	+242.5%	Acquired$34.25 · Nov 7, 2023	0001193125-16-743593
Gores Holdings IIIPO 2016	Completed	Verra MobilityVRRM	-52.8%	Trading$4.72 · Aug 14, 2026	0001047469-18-006535
Gores Holdings IIIIPO 2018	Completed	PAE Inc	+0.5%	Acquired$10.05 · Feb 15, 2022	0001193125-22-006749
Gores MetropoulosIPO 2018	Completed	Luminar TechnologiesLAZR	listing ended	Delisted	0001140361-26-013403
Gores Holdings IVIPO 2019	Completed	UWM HoldingsUWMC	-84.1%	Trading$1.59 · Aug 14, 2026	0001193125-20-319074
Gores Holdings VIPO 2020	Completed	Ardagh Metal PackagingAMBP	-47.7%	Trading$5.23 · Aug 14, 2026	0001047469-21-001235
Gores Holdings VIIPO 2020	Completed	Matterport	-45.0%	Acquired$5.50 · Feb 28, 2025	0001193125-24-158348
Gores Metropoulos IIIPO 2020	Completed	Sonder HoldingsSOND	listing ended	Delisted	0001628280-25-052329
Gores GuggenheimIPO 2021	Completed	Polestar AutomotivePSNY	-95.2%	Trading$14.25 · Aug 14, 2026	0001193125-22-159748
Gores Holdings IXIPO 2021	Liquidated	—	—	—	0001193125-24-279071
Gores Holdings VIIIPO 2021	Liquidated	—	—	—	0001193125-22-312360
Gores Holdings VIIIIPO 2021	Liquidated	—	—	—	0001193125-23-004754

7 of 12 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

Gores Group — Alec Gores' franchise, one of the most prolific US SPAC platforms. Prior-vehicle track record (SEC-verified via formerNames): (1) Gores Holdings I COMPLETED → Hostess Brands (2016). (2) Gores Holdings II COMPLETED → Verra Mobility (VRRM, Nasdaq, still listed). (3) Gores Holdings III COMPLETED → PAE Inc (2020; later acquired, Form 25-NSE 2022-02). (4) Gores Holdings IV COMPLETED → UWM Holdings / United Wholesale Mortgage (UWMC, NYSE, still listed). (5) Gores Holdings V COMPLETED → Ardagh Metal Packaging (AMBP). (6) Gores Holdings VI COMPLETED → Matterport (acquired by CoStar, 25-NSE 2025-02). (7) Gores Metropoulos COMPLETED → Luminar Technologies (LAZR; deregistered 15-12G 2026-04). (8) Gores Metropoulos II COMPLETED → Sonder Holdings (25-NSE 2026-01). (9) Gores Guggenheim COMPLETED → Polestar Automotive (PSNY, 2022). LIQUIDATED (25-NSE + 15-12G, no target): Gores Holdings VII (2022), VIII (2022, Footprint deal terminated), IX (2024). Net: 9 completed deSPACs, 3 liquidations. Strong completer; mixed post-close (Verra Mobility/UWM held up; Matterport, Sonder, Luminar, Polestar struggled or delisted). Sources: SEC EDGAR submissions API (formerNames) + full-text search, efts.sec.gov.

— research profile — The Gores Group was founded in 1987 by Alec E. Gores, an Israeli-born billionaire businessman who immigrated to Flint, Michigan at age fifteen and built his fortune through leveraged buyouts of technology firms. After founding and selling Executive Business Systems to Contel in 1986 for roughly $10 million, Gores established The Gores Group with a vision to buy, fix, and sell businesses, pioneering an operational approach to private equity investing. Headquartered in Beverly Hills, California with an office in Boulder, Colorado, the firm has acquired or invested in over 130 companies and has deployed approximately $4 billion of institutional capital across multiple vehicles. Forbes estimates Gores's net worth at $2.4 billion as of 2026. The SPAC vehicles are technically separate entities from The Gores Group with separate management, though there is overlap in personnel and target industry focus. Key principals alongside Gores include Mark R. Stone, a Senior Managing Director who serves as CEO of the SPAC vehicles, as well as Managing Director Catherine Pollard, Principal Joseph Skarzenski, and Senior Advisors Edward Johnson, Jennifer Kwon Chou, and Ravi Raghunathan.

Gores is widely regarded as one of the most prolific SPAC sponsors in the market, having sponsored more than a dozen SPACs since 2015 as an early adopter of the blank-check structure. The Wall Street Journal profiled him as "The Man With More SPACs Than Anyone," and Wikipedia describes The Gores Group as a "premier SPAC sponsor" that has completed more than seven SPAC transactions representing over $36 billion in transaction value. His SPACs have taken a diverse set of companies public, including Hostess Brands (via Gores Holdings I in a $2.5 billion acquisition in 2016), Verra Mobility (Gores Holdings II, 2018), PAE (Gores Holdings III, $1.6 billion, 2020), United Wholesale Mortgage (Gores Holdings IV, 2021, described as the largest SPAC business combination to date), Luminar Technologies (Gores Metropoulos, 2020), Ardagh Metal Packaging (Gores Holdings V, 2021), Matterport (Gores Holdings VI, 2021), Polestar (Gores Guggenheim, 2022, at a $20 billion implied enterprise value), and Sonder (Gores Metropoulos II, 2022). Additional vehicles include Gores Holdings VII through XI, Gores Technology Partners I and II, and Gores Guggenheim, with IPO sizes ranging from $275 million to $800 million. The Los Angeles Business Journal named Gores its 2021 Business…

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.

Gores Group (Alec Gores) — 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: "…ified via formerNames): (1) Gores Holdings I (CIK 0001644406)" · "…Hostess Brands (2016). (2) Gores Holdings II (CIK 0001682745)" · "…asdaq, still listed). (3) Gores Holdings III (CIK 0001720821)" · "… Form 25-NSE 2022-02). (4) Gores Holdings IV (CIK 0001783398)" · "…C, NYSE, still listed). (5) Gores Holdings V (CIK 0001816816)" · "…etal Packaging (AMBP). (6) Gores Holdings VI (CIK 0001819394)" · "…Star, 25-NSE 2025-02). (7) Gores Metropoulos (CIK 0001758057)" · "…ed 15-12G 2026-04). (8) Gores Metropoulos II (CIK 0001819395)" · "…dings (25-NSE 2026-01). (9) Gores Guggenheim (CIK 0001847127)" · "…E + 15-12G, no target): Gores Holdings VII (CIK 0001828096" · "… Holdings VII (CIK 0001828096, 2022), VIII (CIK 0001841080" · "…1080, 2022, Footprint deal terminated), IX (CIK 0001894630"

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.