A Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) is a single-purpose legal entity created to pool multiple investors into a single investment in a specific company. The SPV is the entity on the cap table rather than each individual investor, used to aggregate angel investors, syndicate participants, or smaller institutional checks into a single line on the cap table. Popularized by AngelList (which built infrastructure for SPV creation and management), it is now widely used across angel syndicates, scout programs, and small institutional vehicles. It is the legal structure that makes syndicated investments practical at scale.
The mechanics:
Creation: lead investor (often a "syndicate lead") creates the SPV as an LLC.
Investor commitments: individual inv...