Hedge fund Tiger Global Management invested at least $19 billion in private tech companies in the past 19 months, an astonishing pace in a period in which startups’ valuations were at or near a peak. As tech stocks crumbled this year, cutting the value of Tiger’s public stock holdings by half, the firm also marked down the value of its private stock in companies such as non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea and cybersecurity firm Lacework.
As of the end of June, for instance, Tiger said its biggest private fund, a $12.7 billion vehicle that launched in October 2021, showed a paper loss of 8%, net of management fees, according to internal documents viewed by The Information. The documents also showed that Tiger significantly marked down the paper returns from earlier funds. Given that public tech stocks have fallen further in recent months and many private companies are overvalued compared with their public counterparts, Tiger’s markdowns are likely far from over.
