Tiger Global Management, the once-prominent tech investor, is feeling the brunt of its investments in blue-chip crypto businesses as losses mount.
According to a report from The Information, Tiger recently informed its investors that its $12.7 billion venture fund launched in late 2021 had a paper loss of 20%, net of management fees, as of December last year.
The report highlights that half a dozen major crypto startups contributed to this loss, with the investment in FTX, NFT marketplace OpenSea, Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs, payments firm MoonPay, decentralized wireless network startup Helium, and Sam Altman’s eyeball scanning protocol Worldcoin, all being marked down.
Tiger invested $126.8 million in OpenSea, an investment that is now valued at just $30.2 million, according to The Information.
Additionally, shares in prized crypto companies are being offered at steep discounts on secondary market platforms. Some OpenSea shares, for example, were trading at a 51% discount on Birel.io, a secondary marketplace, according to The Block.
Tiger’s venture fund has invested more than $11 billion to date, with enterprise software as a service being its largest investment category.
Fintech and crypto are Tiger’s second and third biggest investment categories, respectively. The report also shows that of the 250 startups that Tiger has backed through its venture fund, more than 170 were worth less in December last year than when the firm first invested, suggesting that crypto price tags are falling somewhat in line with the wider tech startup space.
Tiger Global Management’s losses have been sustained over time. Its flagship hedge fund reported losses of 54.7% for the year in November 2022, and later, in March, The Wall Street Journal reported that the value of Tiger’s private funds was marked down by an average of 33% in 2022.
