It seems like old times — sort of.
In November, Tiger Global Management and Coatue Management each made two new private investments in technology unicorns. Three of the companies previously had valuations of at least $1 billion; one attained this vaunted status with its latest financing round. These were the only venture capital investments these Tiger Cubs made last month, a far cry from just a few years ago when the two were among the leading VC investors. In fact, Tiger Global was making an average of one new investment per day.
This year, Tiger Global has made just 40 new private investments. This is up from 30 in 2023, but is still down from the 289 and 345 investments it made in 2022 and 2021, respectively, according to Crunchbase. Coatue also has made 40 new VC investments in 2024, up from 31 the previous year but just a fraction of the 170 completed in 2021, per Crunchbase.
Notably, these two high-profile firms made big commitments to two later-stage private companies even as IPOs have all but dried up for tech-related companies.
Nonetheless, Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global recently led the $175 million Series E financing of Kong Inc., a developer of cloud API technologies. The financing, which included primary and secondary transactions, was completed at a $2 billion valuation, according to the announcement.
The round was co-led by new investor Balderton Capital. Additional new investors included Teachers’ Venture Growth, the late-stage venture and growth investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and 137 Ventures, with additional support from Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, CRV, Sapphire Ventures, and Notable Capital, the press release said. Altogether, Kong has raised $345 million.
In its other deal last month, Tiger Global led the $80 million Series C financing round of Cresta, which provides real-time intelligence for contact centers, according to a separate release. The financing quadrupled the company’s valuation, to $1.6 billion, catapulting it to unicorn status for the first time. The company says it has tripled its revenue over the past year.
Other investors that participated in the financing included Genesys, Five9, J.P. Morgan, CarMax, and Zoom. Previous investors Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and Porsche were involved as well, according to the announcement.
Coatue also invested in two unicorns last month. The firm headed by Philippe Laffont participated in the $300 million Series D financing round for data security company Cyera, according to a release. The round more than doubled Cyera’s valuation, to $3 billion in just six months, according to the announcement. Altogether, the company has raised $760 million. Other investors in the most recent round included Accel and Sapphire Ventures, which co-led the financing, as well as Sequoia, Redpoint, and Georgian.
“We are excited to have the continued support of our investors as we push the boundaries of innovation and scale the world’s leading AI-driven data security platform,” said Yotam Segev, co-founder and CEO of Cyera, in a statement.
In a separate deal, Coatue participated in a $650 million secondary share sale of AI cloud platform operator CoreWeave, according to Reuters. The transaction more than tripled the company’s valuation, to $23 billion, per the report. The deal was led by Jane Street, Magnetar Capital, Fidelity Management, and Macquarie Capital and included Coatue, Cisco, Pure Storage, BlackRock, Neuberger Berman, and others. Reuters says CoreWeave is a candidate to go public next year.
