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 th ...

based in

Boston, Massachusetts Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

and

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

. 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 sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

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 recorded ...

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

2008 financial crisis The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...

. 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) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

(Ticker: AGC) raising $450 million. AGC is a

SPAC SPAC primarily refers to a special-purpose acquisition company, a method of taking a company public by merging it with an already public investment company. SPAC may also refer to: * Henry Crown Sports and Aquatics Center, a sports facility at No ...

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, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...

(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 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 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. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Meta owns and operates several prominent social media platforms and communication services, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads ...

and its CEO,

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling sharehold ...

. 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 The metaverse is a loosely defined term referring to virtual worlds in which users represented by avatars interact, usually in 3D and focused on social and economic connection. The term ''metaverse'' originated in the 1992 science fiction ...

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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AppDynamics AppDynamics is a full-stack application performance management (APM) and IT operations analytics (ITOA) company based in San Francisco. The company focuses on managing the performance and availability of applications across cloud computing envir ...

ByteDance ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing, and incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Founded by Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo, and a team of others in 2012, ByteDance developed the video-sharing ap ...

Cazoo Cazoo is a British automotive online marketplace and classified advertising business based in Richmond, London, Richmond, London. Cazoo is currently owned by MOTORS, following its acquisition from Cazoo Holdings Limited by O3 Industries and Novum ...

Epic Games Epic Games, Inc. is an American Video game developer, video game and software development, software developer and video game publisher, publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney (game developer), Tim Sween ...

Expedia Expedia Inc. is an online travel agency owned by Expedia Group, based in Seattle. The website and mobile app can be used to book airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, cruise ships, and vacation packages. Expedia.com was launched on ...

* FTX *

GitLab GitLab is a software forge primarily developed by GitLab Inc. It is available as a community edition and a commercial edition. History GitLab was created in 2011 by Ukrainian programmer Dmitriy Zaporozhets as a side project written in Rub ...

* Grab *

HubSpot HubSpot, Inc. is a US-based developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. Its products and services are meant to provide tools for customer relationship management, social media marketing, conten ...

* Julep *

MongoDB MongoDB is a source-available, cross-platform, document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database product, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional database schema, schemas. Released in February 2009 by 10gen (now MongoDB ...

* Namely * OfferUp *

Okta In meteorology, an okta is a scale 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 fro ...

Pine Labs Pine Labs is an Indian company that provides point of sales systems and payment systems, founded in 1998. The company has a valuation of over US$5 billion. The company makes Android-based point of sale (PoS) machines and has more than 70,000 ...

* Plaid * Priceline *

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. , the company employs over 2,400 ...

Snowflake A snowflake is a single ice crystal that is large enough to fall through the Earth's atmosphere as snow.Knight, C.; Knight, N. (1973). Snow crystals. Scientific American, vol. 228, no. 1, pp. 100–107.Hobbs, P.V. 1974. Ice Physics. Oxford: C ...

SoFi SoFi Technologies, Inc. (abbreviated as SoFi) is an American personal finance and financial technology company. Founded in 2011 at Stanford University, it operates as a direct bank and provides its technology platform to other financial institu ...

* StockX * Twilio *

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...

* UiPath *

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

* 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 fund firms of the United States Venture capital firms of the United States