One of the world’s largest private-investment firms, Tiger Global is selling assets piecemeal to achieve greater liquidity after failing to secure bids for a portfolio of assets packaged in a strip sale, according to people with direct knowledge of the sale. 

The move underscores the challenges facing asset managers as they try to find buyers for their venture portfolios, according to Pitchbook, a research firm and financial data provider.

Tiger Global is focused on public and private tech companies involved in internet, software, consumer, and financial technology.

The New York City-based investment firm has been trying for months to generate liquidity after it accumulated a huge portfolio of late-stage companies in a pandemic-era shopping spree. The firm backed 315 companies in 355 deals in 2021 alone, according to PitchBook data.

In 2020, Tiger Global earned its investors $10.4 billion — more than any other hedge fund on the annual list of the top 20 managers compiled by London fund-of-funds firm LCH Investments, according to Institutional Investor.

In 2022, things changed, and Tiger experienced significant losses. By June 2022, the firm’s hedge fund and its long-only fund had declined in value by 52 percent and 62 percent respectively since the beginning of 2022, Wall Street Journal reported.

WSJ described the hedge fund’s loss as “one of the largest ever” and an anonymous hedge fund manager said its losses were “the biggest in the history of hedge funds.”

Several people interviewed by New York Magazine in June 2022 called Tiger Global “the poster child” of the tech meltdown.

The most efficient way to generate liquidity is a strip sale, according to Pitchbook. That means packaging attractive assets alongside assets with poor prospects to negotiate an average across-the-board price that would allow Tiger to sell stakes in many companies at once, including the ones that are hard to sell individually, said Joe Endoso, COO of Linqto, a private securities investment platform. Linqto is interested in buying specific companies from Tiger but isn’t involved in the current bidding process, Pitchbook reported 

Unlike the strip sale, many parties are expressing interest in Tiger’s individual assets. 

Tiger owns stakes in some of the biggest names in venture capital including Chime, Databricks, Brex and Cohere. Many of those investments came with sky-high valuations: In 2021, Tiger led deals to back financial tech company Revolut at a $33 billion post-money valuation and self-driving car startup Nuro at an $8.6 billion valuation.

Tiger isn’t the only investor that failed to sell a strip portfolio of late-stage VC assets, Pitchbook reported.

“There are at least five portfolios with a [net asset value] of over $200 million. Many of these are brand name funds and brand name family offices. There are no bids,” said Ken Sawyer, managing director at Saints Capital, a VC firm that invests in direct stakes and portfolios.

Tiger’s willingness to sell its assets piecemeal suggests it is under more pressure for liquidity than other venture firms, according to an investor who has spoken with Evercore, Tiger’s adviser, about buying direct stakes from the company.

The pool of potential buyers is larger for specific companies than for a strip sale and Tiger could fetch a higher price on specific companies than on a portfolio of assets, Pitchbook reported. 

Founded in 2001 by Chase Coleman, Tiger Global became one of the most prolific venture capital investors, backing numerous startups in the past decade. Since the beginning of 2020, it has invested more than $20 billion in private startups, with major holdings in companies including payments startup Stripe, TikTok parent ByteDance, and fashion retailer Shein.