The Tiger Crowd Just Made New
Investments in These Unicorns

Tiger Global, D1, Coatue, and Viking are among the Tiger-related funds that are putting money into billion-dollar-plus private companies.

·         Stephen Taub

June 30, 2021

 

Tiger Cubs and other Tiger Management descendants have made a number of fresh investments in unicorns in just the past week or so.

These hedge funds have been among the most active investors in private investments in general, with many of them focusing on late stage financing rounds of seasoned companies preparing to go public.

“This is all premised around companies staying private longer,” Stefan Pollmann, head of privates at Williams Trading, said in an interview. “There is a much larger universe of private companies growing and becoming unicorns.”

Earlier this week, for example, four-year old Side, a real estate technology company, raised $50 million in a fundraising led by Tiger Global Management and with participation from Dan Sundheim’s D1 Capital Partners and ICONIQ Capital, according to a press release.

The financing more than doubled the company’s valuation to $2.5 billion from $1 billion just three months ago when it raised $150 million in a fundraising led by Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management, according to the press release.

Tiger Global and Coatue, best known for their hedge funds, each have large, separate businesses devoted to investing in private companies.

In Tiger Global’s case, the private business is larger than its public funds, which include its long-short hedge funds and long-only funds. The public funds also invest in private assets.

Tiger Global’s private business was co-founded in 2003 by Chase Coleman and partner Scott Shleifer, who currently heads up the operation.

In other recent unicorn deals, on June 15, Addepar, a technology platform for wealth management, said it raised $150 million from D1 at a valuation of $2 billion as part of its Series F financing.

“At D1 we seek to back visionary companies that solve large, pressing problems,” said Prateek Bhide, principal at D1, in the press release.

D1’s class C hedge fund shares allocate 35 percent of their total capital to private investments.

Last week Coatue led the $100 million Series E financing for Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform, according to a press release. The financing lifted the company’s valuation to $4.2 billion, according to the announcement.

Meanwhile, O. Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global Investors recently participated in the $200 million Series E funding round of marketing company Iterable, according to a company announcement. Iterable said it is now valued at $2 billion.

Also in June, Viking and SoftBank Group invested $250 million in Clip, a Mexican fintech company, according to a Bloomberg report. The deal lifted the payments company’s valuation to $2 billion, according to the report.

In addition to its long-short and long-only funds, Viking has a very successful hybrid fund, Viking Global Opportunities.