Tiger Global, the investor that spurred the VC bull market of 2020-2021, is reportedly raising a fresh $2.2 billion fund.
The firm sent a letter to potential limited partners, according to a copy obtained by CNBC, seeking to raise the cash for a vehicle called Private Investment Partners 17 (PIP 17). The letter also promises a more humble approach than during the 2021 bull-market madness.
During that time, Tiger Global was moving fast and investing abundantly, a method the venture industry calls “spray and pray.”
PIP 15, raised in 2021, was a whopping $12.7 billion fund that pumped cash into startups at a blinding pace largely at peak valuations, TechCrunch reported.
In 2021 alone, the hedge fund backed 315 startups, according to PitchBook data, and spurred bidding wars among VCs to get stakes in even unproven startups that ratched up valuations.
When interest rates rose, the party was over, and startups spent years trying to live up to their 2021 valuations, many shuttering along the way.
After the venture market crash in 2022-23, prolific Tiger Global investor John Curtius left to start his own fund, and Scott Shleifer, the firm’s chief of private equity investments, transitioned to an advisory role, while Tiger’s famed founder, Chase Coleman, took on 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 at the time, which is, admittedly, still an enormous fund.
Now, on the strength of PIP 16’s blockbuster AI investments, Tiger Global is raising Fund 17. PIP 16 holds stakes in OpenAI, Waymo and Databricks, all of which have had skyrocketing valuations and driven this fund’s paper gains by 33% so far, the letter said as reported by CNBC.
Still, in a nod to the need for more caution than in previous years, the letter promised a more targeted approach. It acknowledged that leaning into AI investments could be risky and require “humility” because “valuations are elevated and, in our view, sometimes unsupported by company fundamentals,” according to CNBC. (Tiger Global could not be immediately reached for comment.)
In other words, even as Tiger Global raises a fresh fund to go after more big AI opportunities, it’s implying that the AI market is in a bubble, and it doesn’t want to drive valuations to even higher, perhaps unrealistic, heights.
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Aaru, a startup that provides near-instant customer research by using AI to simulate user behavior, has raised a Series A led by Redpoint Ventures, according to three people familiar with the deal.
The funding round included different valuation tiers, these people said. Although some equity was acquired at a $1 billion valuation, a lower valuation for other investors resulted in a blended valuation below $1 billion, according to people familiar with the deal. Multi-tier valuations within the same round are an unusual mechanism in venture capital, but investors say they are becoming increasingly common for desirable AI startups in the current market. This approach allows the company to report a higher “headline” valuation while simultaneously offering better terms to specific investors.
Aaru and Redpoint Ventures didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The exact round size couldn’t be learned, but one person said that it is above $50 million. Another source said that the startup is growing quickly, but its annual recurring revenue (ARR) is still below $10 million.
Aaru was founded in March 2024 by Cameron Fink, Ned Koh, and John Kessler, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
The startup’s prediction model generates thousands of AI agents that simulate human behavior using public and proprietary data. Aaru replaces traditional market research methods, which generally include surveys and focus groups, by using agents to predict how groups in specific demographics or geographies will respond to future events.
The company’s customer partners include Accenture, EY, Interpublic Group, and political campaigns. Last year, Aaru AI’s polling methodology accurately predicted the outcome of the New York Democratic primary, according to reporting by Semafor.
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Aaru competes with other social simulation startups, including CulturePulse and Simile, as well as startups that apply AI to query humans about their product preferences, such as Listen Labs, Keplar, and Outset.
The startup raised an undisclosed amount of seed and pre-seed capital from investors, including A*, Abstract Ventures, General Catalyst, Accenture Ventures, and Z Fellows, according to people familiar with the deal and PitchBook data.
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