Tiger Global Looking To Sell Off Startup Stakes

Chris Metinko

Tiger Global — one of the biggest players in the venture market in recent years — seems to be changing its stripes.

Search less. Close more.

Grow your revenue with all-in-one prospecting solutions powered by the leader in private-company data.

The New York-based crossover investment giant has hired an adviser to help it sell off some stakes in startups, per a report in the Financial Times. Such a process — called a secondary sale — could allow Tiger to return capital to some of its investors.

Just last month, it was reported Tiger Global’s $12.7 billion fund — which was launched near the end of 2021 — had a paper loss of 20%, net of management fees, as of December.

In March, The Wall Street Journal reported Tiger Global had marked down the value of its investments across its venture capital funds by about 33%.

Writedowns

Some notable writedowns from Tiger Global’s Private Investment Partners XV include its entire $38 million investment in the now bankrupt FTX and FTX.US, as well other crypto and Web3 investments such as MoonPay, decentralized wireless network company Helium, and NFT startup Bored Ape Yacht Club, per the report last month.

Tiger also took a huge hit in its investment in NFT marketplace OpenSea. The firm invested $126.8 million in the startup in November 2021 and January 2022. However, at the end of last year, Tiger had marked that investment down to $30.2 million — a 76% drop, according to the report.

Tiger also had a significant writedown on its largest holding, ByteDance. Through its recent fund, Tiger invested $144.6 million in the China-based company in mid-2021 in secondary transactions. In September 2022, Tiger valued those investments at $100.8 million, per the report.

Slowdown

The writedowns come on the heels of the news Tiger had reduced the target size for its latest venture fund to $5 billion — down from a $6 billion target it set last fall and down more than 50% of what the firm anticipated raising earlier last year, according to another WSJ report.

Tiger has massively cut down on its investments throughout the past year, according to Crunchbase data. The firm made 245 deals in the first half of last year, but so far this year has made only 15.

One of those investments was just announced Monday, as San Francisco-based Zip raised a $100 million Series C at a $1.5 billion post-money valuation from investors that included Tiger.