Dr. Ellison’s research forms the foundation for the A.R.I. Venture Debt Deal Index™ and A.R.I. Venture Debt Research Series™, launching in 2026

Applied Real Intelligence (“A.R.I.”), a leading provider of growth credit and venture debt to North American innovators, announced today that its Founder and Managing General Partner, Dr. Zack Ellison, has earned a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) from the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business.

His doctoral research, Venture Debt: An Empirical Study of Loan-Level Pricing and Stock-Level Performance, establishes the first integrated, large-sample empirical framework for analyzing venture debt transactions alongside the public-market performance of venture debt lenders. In doing so, the research addresses longstanding gaps in a market that has historically lacked standardized datasets, widely accepted benchmarks, and large-sample empirical evidence.

Venture debt refers to loans provided to venture capital–backed companies, typically structured alongside equity financing to extend operating runway while limiting founder ownership dilution. Despite its growing importance within the innovation economy, venture debt has historically been evaluated using anecdotal norms and fragmented disclosures rather than comprehensive, data-driven analysis.

Dr. Ellison’s research constructs an original hand-collected dataset of 810 individually disclosed venture debt transactions originated by publicly traded Business Development Companies (BDCs) between 2018 and 2025, representing one of the most comprehensive empirical foundations for venture debt research in the academic literature.

This loan-level dataset is paired with 144 months of publicly traded BDC stock return data from 2013 to 2024, enabling analysis across multiple credit cycles and market regimes. Together, the datasets allow for systematic examination of venture debt contract structure, pricing determinants, risk factors, and lender performance, while also assessing market behavior during periods of systemic stress, including the 2023 failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

Key Contributions of Dr. Zack Ellison's Venture Debt Research

• Establishes a large-scale, replicable dataset for venture debt across private and public markets.
• Documents how venture debt is structured in practice across publicly traded lenders.
• Identifies the key drivers of venture debt pricing.
• Finds economically meaningful excess returns (“alpha”) in venture debt BDC equities.
• Examines venture debt behavior during periods of systemic stress, including the 2023 SVB collapse.

By integrating large-sample loan-level evidence with public-market performance data, the research provides a unified empirical framework for understanding how venture debt is structured, priced, and valued across market cycles. The findings offer new clarity on venture debt’s risk–return dynamics, the behavior of publicly traded venture lenders, and the role venture debt plays as a bridge between private credit, venture capital, and public equity markets.

Academic Lineage and Empirical Foundations

Dr. Ellison’s research reflects a direct academic lineage rooted in the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and carried forward through the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business. As an MBA graduate of Chicago Booth, his doctoral research at UF Warrington was conducted under the guidance of Professor Michael Ryngaert, Chair of the Eugene F. Brigham Finance, Insurance and Real Estate Department.

Professor Ryngaert earned his Ph.D. in Finance and Economics from the University of Chicago, where he studied under Eugene Fama and Kenneth French, whose work established the foundations of modern empirical asset pricing theory. That intellectual tradition is reflected directly in Dr. Ellison’s research, which extends Fama–French and related multi-factor asset-pricing frameworks to analyze venture debt lender performance and risk-adjusted returns using newly constructed, large-sample datasets.

"Venture debt is one of the most important, yet least understood, sources of capital for innovation-driven companies,” said Dr. Ellison. “Ultimately, my research at the University of Florida demonstrates how venture debt operates in practice, replacing anecdote and convention with rigorous empirical evidence. This work will improve transparency and information quality, sharpen risk assessment, and elevate the analytical frameworks used to evaluate venture debt investments across both private and public markets.”

A.R.I.’s Venture Debt Research Platform: Index and Research Series

Building upon the empirical foundation established by Dr. Ellison’s research, A.R.I. will launch the A.R.I. Venture Debt Deal Index™ in 2026, the first systematic benchmark designed to track deal-level pricing, structure, and market activity across the venture debt ecosystem.

In parallel, the firm will publish the A.R.I. Venture Debt Research Series™, a multi-part whitepaper program translating Dr. Ellison’s research insights into practitioner-focused analysis for institutional investors, borrowers, lenders, academics, and policymakers.

About Applied Real Intelligence (A.R.I.)

Applied Real Intelligence (A.R.I.) is a leading private credit investment platform providing senior secured growth credit and venture debt to innovation-driven companies across North America. The firm’s proprietary A.R.I. 7S Investment Methodology™ – Senior, Secured, Structured, Small, Short, Scalable, Strategic – guides its structured approach to financing innovation. Learn more at www.arivc.com.

About Dr. Zack Ellison

Dr. Zack Ellison, DBA, MBA, MS, CFA, CAIA, is the Founder and Managing General Partner of Applied Real Intelligence (A.R.I.) and Chief Investment Officer of the A.R.I. Senior Secured Growth Credit Fund series. He earned a Doctor of Business Administration from the University of Florida, an MBA in Analytical Finance and Economics from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, an MS in Risk Management from the NYU Stern School of Business, and a BA in Economics from Swarthmore College. Dr. Ellison has more than 20 years of global capital markets experience as a loan underwriter, investment banker, corporate credit trader, and fixed income portfolio manager across five publicly traded financial institutions, including three with more than $1 trillion in assets.

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“My research at the University of Florida demonstrates how venture debt operates in practice, replacing anecdote and convention with rigorous empirical evidence.” — Dr. Zack Ellison, DBA, MBA, MS, CFA, CAIA