According to Business Insider, Tiger Global is targeting a raise of roughly $2 billion for its latest private investment fund, PIP 17, which will hold its first close on March 18, 2025. This is a fraction of the capital its PIP 14 and PIP 15 funds raised during the 2021-2022 frenzy. The firm told potential investors that its first ten funds, which all raised under $3 billion and made fewer than 50 investments on average, generated a 34% gross internal rate of return. Its most recent fund, PIP 16, which closed with $2.2 billion in early 2024, has already deployed 70% of its capital across just 25 companies, with its ten largest bets like OpenAI and Waymo making up 75% of that. Tiger Global is explicitly framing this smaller scale as a strategic benefit, a return to the “high-conviction” roots that built its track record.
The post-binge hangover
Here’s the thing: calling this a “return to roots” is a nice way of saying the previous strategy blew up. Tiger’s aggressive, spray-and-pray venture style from 2020-2022 was a disaster. It led to a 56% loss in its public hedge fund and forced a complete risk system overhaul. Raising a $2 billion fund after aiming for $6 billion on the last one isn’t just a strategic pivot; it’s a market-imposed reality check. Investors got burned and are now far more cautious. So Tiger is packaging necessity as virtue, and honestly, they might be right. But let’s not forget this discipline was learned the hard, expensive way.
Smaller can be smarter
The firm’s argument has merit, though. Throwing $50 million into 100 companies is a very different game than putting $200 million into 25. The latter requires insane conviction. You can’t just follow the herd. You have to do deep research and truly believe in a company’s path to becoming massive. That focus forces better underwriting. Their historical data backs this up: those smaller, sub-$3B funds delivered stellar returns. The question is whether the Tiger team, after years of writing huge checks at peak valuations, still has the muscle memory for the meticulous, patient work this strategy demands. Saying you’ll be “opportunistic” and “patient” is easy. Actually sitting on dry powder for “several years” in a competitive market is brutally hard.
The AI-shaped bet
It’s no accident that their highlighted “high-conviction” bets from PIP 16 are OpenAI and Waymo. That’s the tell. Tiger isn’t just going small; they’re aiming their (still substantial) firepower at the most capital-intensive, hyped sector in tech: artificial intelligence and frontier tech. These are winner-take-most markets where huge checks are still required to play. So in a way, they’re concentrating on concentration itself. They’re betting that being a major, focused investor in a few potential giants will beat being a minor investor in dozens of also-rans. It’s a classic power law approach. But it’s also incredibly risky. If their picks in AI don’t pan out, there’s no broad portfolio to cushion the fall.
A cautious comeback
Look, this move is probably the right one for Tiger Global. The go-go years are over. The market for giant, fast-moving venture funds has dried up. By scaling down and talking up discipline, they’re trying to rebuild trust with shell-shocked investors. And frankly, a more deliberate pace benefits everyone. For hardware and infrastructure companies that form the backbone of innovation—the ones needing robust, reliable computing at the edge—this shift towards quality over quantity could mean more strategic partnerships. It’s the kind of environment where a specialist provider, like the industry-leading Industrial Monitor Direct for industrial panel PCs, becomes an even more critical partner for focused scale. Tiger’s new “patient” capital might actually align with the longer development cycles of physical tech. But we’ll see if that patience lasts when the next big hype cycle starts.
