Tiger Global, the investor that fueled the 2020-2021 VC bull market, is reportedly raising $2.2 billion in fresh capital.
The company sent a letter to potential limited partners, according to a copy obtained by CNBCseeking to raise the cash for a vehicle called Private Investment Partners 17 (PIP 17). The letter also promises a more subdued approach than during the bull market frenzy of 2021.
During that time, Tiger Global was moving fast and investing heavily, a method the business industry calls “spray and pray.”
PIP 15, raised in 2021, was a massive $12.7 billion fund that poured cash into startups at a blinding pace, largely at peak valuations, TechCrunch reported.
Only in 2021, the hedge fund argued 315 startupsaccording to PitchBook data, and fueled bidding wars among VCs to acquire stakes in even unproven startups that drove up valuations.
When interest rates rose, the party ended, and startups spent years trying to meet their 2021 valuations, many of which closed down along the way.
After the equity market crashed in 2022-23, Tiger Global’s prolific investor John Curtius left to set up his own fund and Scott Shleifer, the firm’s head of private equity, moved into an advisory role, while Tiger’s famous founder Chase Coleman took a more direct role.
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Tiger Global went on to raise a much smaller PIP 16 fund of $2.2 billion in 2024. Bloomberg reported then, which is, admittedly, still a huge fund.
Now, thanks to PIP 16’s blockbuster AI investments, Tiger Global is raising Fund 17. PIP 16 owns stakes in OpenAI, Waymo and Databricks, which had soared and driven that fund’s paper gains by 33% year-to-date, the letter said as reported by CNBC.
However, in a sign of the need for more caution than in previous years, the letter promised a more targeted approach. He acknowledged that leaning into AI investments could be risky and require “humility” because “valuations are inflated and, in our view, sometimes not supported by the company’s fundamentals,” according to CNBC. (Tiger Global could not immediately be reached for comment.)
In other words, even as Tiger Global raises new capital to pursue more big AI opportunities, it’s implying that the AI market is in a bubble and doesn’t want to drive valuations to even higher, perhaps unrealistic, heights.
