Tiger Global Management announced Monday the launch of its latest venture capital fund, Private Investment Partners 17, according to a letter to investors viewed by CNBC.
Tiger is targeting a raise of $2.2 billion for the fund, according to a person familiar with the firm’s strategy who declined to be named in order to discuss internal matters.
The hedge fund wrote that it’s expecting PIP 17 to be similar in “strategy, size and construction” to its earliest vintages and its most recent, PIP 16, which targeted $6 billion but ultimately closed at $2.2 billion.
The largest positions in PIP 16 are OpenAI and Waymo, stakes that have helped performance rebound. In a call with investors, Tiger said that PIP 16 is up 33% year-to-date, while PIP 15 is up 16%.
Compared to the megafunds of the early 2020s, the latest raise target signals a pivot to a more disciplined strategy for Tiger Global.
The firm was one of the biggest forces in the startup ecosystem over the last half-decade, but has seen heavy markdowns and slower deployment in the last few years.
In 2021, the heyday of its “spray and pray” approach, it led 212 rounds, according to Crunchbase data. This year, it made just nine new private investments.
Tiger first invested in OpenAI in 2021 at a valuation of less than $16 billion and in Waymo that same year at $39 billion.
The Tiger Global letter and audio of the investor call obtained by CNBC also signal some concerns about the potential for a bubble in artificial intelligence.
“[V]aluations are elevated, and, in our view, at times unsupported by company fundamentals,” the firm wrote in the letter. “We also recognize the importance of approaching a technological shift of this magnitude with some humility.”
The strategy that founder Chase Coleman laid out is to prune aggressively and reinforce its biggest winners.
Tiger says it has sold more than 85 companies from PIP 15, generating over $1 billion in proceeds.
That money can now be recycled into follow-in investments for companies it considers winners.
Some of the names Tiger said it would concentrate on include Revolut, a digital banking startup, and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
Other companies Tiger is focusing on include police tech company Flock Safety, EV company Harbinger, e-commerce startup Rokt, freight company Cargomatic, and stablecoin startup BVNK, the investor presentation showed.
