Silver Lake raises $20b for global tech fund

LPs include Cathay Life Insurance, Florida State Board of Administration, Los Angeles Fire & Police Pensions, and South Dakota Investment Council, as well as New York State Teachers’ Retirement System, which contributed $300 million. There was a $500 million commitment from the GP. It brings assets under management to around $75 billion.

Asia appears set to feature prominently in the deployment strategy, with Silver Lake having recently ramped up its activity in the region. In the past year alone, the private equity firm has participated in a $2.3 billion investment in China’s TAL Education and led funding - reportedly of $500 million - for Indian education platform Byju’s at a valuation of $11 billion.

In September, Silver Lake put $1 billion into Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of India’s Reliance Industries, kicking off a round that would close at $6.4 billion within two months. This followed closely on two investments worth a combined $1.3 billion in Jio Platforms, another Reliance subsidiary that went on to raise some $20 billion last year.

The plan is to help Reliance Industries create a diversified data and e-commerce ecosystem provider in the vein of Alibaba Group, which Silver Lake backed in 2011 and 2012 and has since partially exited. More recent activity in the region includes significant investments in Chinese artificial intelligence developer SenseTime and ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing. Silver Lake acquired Australian live events business TEG from Affinity Equity Partners in 2019.

The new fund comes four months after Silver Lake set a new long-term strategy in partnership with Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala, which acquired an approximately 5% stake in the GP and committed $2 billion to the plan. The idea is to implement a 25-year deployment lifecycle, investing flexibly across investment structures, geographies and industries, as well as across capital structures and the spectrum of early to later stages.

“We are very pleased with the response we have received across the board from limited partners, especially given the current environment, which we believe validates Silver Lake’s strategic discipline, deep technology expertise, and intensive focus on growth,” Susannah Carrier, Silver Lake’s global head of fundraising, said in a statement.

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• Topics
• North America
• Fundraising
• Growth
• Technology
• Buyout
• USA
• Asia
• Silver Lake
• Los Angeles Fire & Police Pensions (LAFPP)
• New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS)
• Mubadala