Tiger Global is planning a cautious future for the project with a new $2.2 billion fund

Tiger Global, the investor that fueled the 2020-2021 venture capital bull market, is reportedly raising a new $2.2 billion fund.

The company sent a letter to potential limited partners, according to a copy obtained by CNBC, seeking to raise money to purchase a vehicle called Private Investment Partners 17 (PIP 17). The letter also promises a more modest approach than during 2021’s bull market madness.

During that period, Tiger Global was moving quickly and investing heavily, a method the venture industry calls “spray and pray.”

The PIP 15 fund, raised in 2021, was a $12.7 billion mega fund that pumped money into startups at a dizzying pace largely at peak valuations, TechCrunch reported.

In 2021 alone, the hedge fund backed 315 startups, according to PitchBook data, and sparked bidding wars between venture capital firms for stakes even in unproven startups that drove up valuations.

When interest rates rose, the party was over, and startups spent years trying to live up to their 2021 valuations, and many closed their doors along the way.

After the venture market collapsed in 2022-2023, John Curtius, Tiger Global’s prolific investor, left to start his own fund, and Scott Schleifer, the firm’s head of private equity investments, moved into an advisory role, while Tiger’s famous founder, Chase Coleman, took on a more direct role.

Tiger Global went on to raise a much smaller $2.2 billion PIP 16 fund in 2024, Bloomberg reported at the time, which is still a mega fund.

Now, building on the strength of PIP 16’s blockbuster AI investments, Tiger Global is raising Fund 17. PIP 16 owns stakes in OpenAI, Waymo, and Databricks, all of which have achieved sky-high valuations and boosted that fund’s paper gains by 33% year to date, CNBC reported.

However, in a nod to the need for greater caution compared to previous years, the letter promised a more targeted approach. She acknowledged that leaning into AI investments can be risky and requires “humility” because “valuations are high and, in our view, sometimes not supported by company fundamentals,” according to CNBC. (Tiger Global could not immediately be reached for comment.)

In other words, even when Tiger Global raises a new fund to pursue more large AI opportunities, it means the AI ​​market is in a bubble, and does not want to push valuations to higher, perhaps unrealistic, heights.