Altimeter Capital is an American

investment firm An investment company is a financial institution principally engaged in holding, managing and investing securities. These companies in the United States are regulated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and must be registered under the ...

based in Boston, Massachusetts and

Menlo Park, California Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; ...

. The firm focuses on technology investments in both

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

and

private Private or privates may refer to: Music * " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...

markets globally.

Background

In 2008, Brad Gerstner founded Altimeter Capital in Boston, Massachusetts. It was launched with less than $3 million from Gerstner's friends and family during the

financial crisis of 2008 Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fi ...

. Prior to that, Gerstner worked at PAR Capital Management as well as General Catalyst. A month after the launch of Altimeter Capital, an office was opened in Menlo Park, California. In 2013, Altimeter Capital closed its first venture capital fund at $75 million. In September 2020, Altimeter Growth Corp was listed on the

Nasdaq The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

(Ticker: AGC) raising $450 million. AGC is a SPAC which is a blank-check company. In April 2021 it was announced that AGC would merge with Singapore ridesharing company, Grab to help it list on Nasdaq under the ticker, GRAB. In January 2021, a second SPAC, Altimeter Growth Corporation 2 was listed on

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...

(Ticker: AGCB) raising $450 million. It was terminated early in December 2022 due to its inability to secure a suitable merger deal.

Business overview

For public markets, Altimeter Capital manages a long / short public equity fund that invests in technology companies. The public equity fund is noted for its strong performance, averaging annual returns of 29.52% since 2011. For private markets, Altimeter Capital manages private

growth equity Growth capital (also called expansion capital and growth equity) is a type of private equity investment, usually a Minority interest, minority investment, in relatively mature companies that are looking for capital to expand or restructure operatio ...

funds that invest in both early and later stage technology companies. Its first private fund was closed in 2013.

Public market investments

United Continental Holdings

In January 2016, Altimeter Capital pressured

United Continental Holdings United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (formerly known as United Continental Holdings, Inc., UAL Corporation, Allegis Corporation and founded originally as UAL, Inc.) is a publicly traded airline holding company headquartered in the Willis Tower in Chica ...

to change its board of directors. Gerstner released a statement stating how investors were disappointed with the poor performance and decision making of the company in recent years. United Continental Holdings eventually gave in and changed its board of directors.

Meta Platforms

In October 2022, Gerstner on behalf of Altimeter Capital wrote an open letter to

Meta Platforms Meta Platforms, Inc., (file no. 3835815) trade name, doing business as Meta and formerly named Facebook, Inc., and TheFacebook, Inc., is an American multinational technology conglomerate based in Menlo Park, California. The company owns Facebo ...

and its CEO,

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), o ...

. In the letter, Gerstner criticized the company stating it had too many employees and was moving too slowly to retain investor confidence. He recommended reducing the headcount expense by 20% and limiting

Metaverse In science fiction, the "metaverse" is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal, and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. In colloquial usage, ...

investments to $5 billion per year. A few weeks later, Meta laid off over 11,000 employees.

Venture Capital funds

Notable venture capital investments

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Epic Games Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, M ...

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* FTX *

GitLab GitLab Inc. is an open-core company that operates GitLab, a DevOps software package which can develop, secure, and operate software. The open source software project was created by Ukrainian developer Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Dutch developer S ...

* Grab *

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* Julep * Modern Treasury *

MongoDB MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database program, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas. MongoDB is developed by MongoDB Inc. and licensed under the Serve ...

* Namely *

OfferUp OfferUp is an online mobile-first C2C marketplace with an emphasis on in-person transactions. It was founded as a competitor to Craigslist, differentiating itself with mobile-friendly apps and user profiles with ratings. History OfferUp was crea ...

Okta In meteorology, an okta is a unit of measurement used to describe the amount of cloud cover at any given location such as a weather station. Sky conditions are estimated in terms of how many eighths of the sky are covered in cloud, ranging from ...

Pine Labs Pine Labs is an Indian company that provides financing and last-mile retail transaction technology. It was founded in 1998. It is one of the unicorn companies, with a valuation of over US$5 billion. It provides a merchant platform and makes s ...

Plaid Plaid () may refer to: Fabric * Full plaid, a cloth made with a tartan pattern, wrapped around the waist, cast over the shoulder and fastened at the front * A synonym for tartan in North America * A plaid shirt, typically of flannel and worn du ...

Priceline Priceline may refer to: *Priceline.com, a commercial website which helps users obtain discount rates for travel-related items such as airline tickets and hotel stays *The Priceline Group, a provider of online travel & related services, and a parent ...

Roblox Corporation Roblox Corporation is an American video game developer based in San Mateo, California. Founded in 2004 by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel, the company is the developer of ''Roblox'', which was released in 2006. As of December 31, 2021, Roblox C ...

Snowflake A snowflake is a single ice crystal that has achieved a sufficient size, and may have amalgamated with others, which falls through the Earth's atmosphere as snow.Knight, C.; Knight, N. (1973). Snow crystals. Scientific American, vol. 228, no. ...

SoFi Sofi may refer to: *Sofi (mascot), the Mascot for 2010 ISF Women's World Championship *Sofi Marinova (born 1975), Bulgarian singer SOFI may refer to: *Swedish Institute for Language and Folklore * Spray-On Foam Insulation, used on the Space Shutt ...

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Twilio Twilio () is an American company based in San Francisco, California, which provides programmable communication tools for making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication functions using it ...

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), package ...

UiPath UiPath is a global software company that makes robotic process automation (RPA) software. It was founded in Bucharest, Romania, by Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă. Its headquarters are in New York City. The company's software monitors user activ ...

Unity Technologies Unity Software Inc. (doing business as Unity Technologies) is a video game software development company based in San Francisco. It was founded in Denmark in 2004 as Over the Edge Entertainment (OTEE) and changed its name in 2007. Unity Technolo ...

* Vroom

References

External links

www.altimeter.com
(Company Website)
www.altimetergrowth.com
(Capital Markets Platform) {{DEFAULTSORT:Altimeter Capital Financial services companies established in 2008 Financial services companies based in Massachusetts Companies based in Boston Companies based in Menlo Park, California Hedge funds Venture capital firms