Before ChatGPT turned into a cultural phenomenon in 2022, OpenAI's co-founder and CEO Sam Altman phoned Tiger Global founder Chase Coleman with a pitch to buy in at a $15.7 billion valuation. Tiger Global committed $150 million in 2021 and has since topped up its stake several times, according to people familiar with the deal. Some investors were earlier: Khosla Ventures joined in 2019, and around 2015 the effort drew support from Y Combinator along with billionaires Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel; nevertheless, Tiger Global became the first hedge fund investor. Most big-name investors only fully appreciated the momentum after ChatGPT's breakout.
Fast forward five years from Altman's call, and OpenAI is negotiating a fundraising round of about $30 billion at a valuation near $1.4 trillion. On those terms, Tiger Global would be sitting on an estimated $5 billion paper gain, one of the firm's largest wins since it launched roughly 25 years ago, people said. Turning that into actual cash will take time: a full exit hinges on an IPO, and Altman has pushed any listing to at least next year.
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The OpenAI bet has already lifted results. Through the first nine months of the year, Tiger Global's hedge fund rose 9.4%, while its public-private crossover fund gained 19.3%, the people said. In the venture pool, OpenAI is among the biggest positions in the latest fund, which showed a 65% gross internal rate of return as of June 30, and a 44% net IRR after fees. Representatives for both firms did not provide comment.
OpenAI's surge has been a bright spot after a rough 2022, when rising rates slammed tech stocks and venture valuations, cutting Tiger Global's assets to $50 billion from $100 billion. That stretch triggered leadership changes and a return to smaller, more concentrated bets, with Coleman taking more control over illiquid investments. He has been more directly involved with Private Investment Partners 16, a $2.2 billion vehicle that is the firm's leanest venture fund in about ten years and holds stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic PBC, Waymo, and Temporal Technologies Inc. Today, Tiger Global manages about $60 billion and counts OpenAI among its most successful investments, alongside standout wins like JD.com, which produced more than $6.5 billion, and Flipkart, which delivered $3.5 billion. Coleman started New York-based Tiger Global in 2001, joining the ranks of the so-called tiger cubs who trained under Julian Robertson's Tiger Management.
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