Altimeter's vintage VC funds: 61% net IRR and $6.5B realized, mostly on the back of Snowflake
Feb 28, 2025
Key Points
- Altimeter Capital's early VC funds delivered 61% net IRR and $6.5 billion in realized gains on $2.8 billion committed capital, with a single Snowflake investment accounting for $4.4 billion of those returns.
- Brad Gerstner founded Altimeter with $3 million in February 2008, timing the firm to capitalize on the cloud infrastructure boom as early-vintage funds matured.
- The concentrated returns make it difficult to assess broader portfolio performance beyond the outsized Snowflake bet, raising questions about the fund's repeatable edge in cloud infrastructure investing.
Summary
Altimeter Capital's early VC funds posted 61% net IRR and $6.5 billion in realized gains on $2.8 billion in committed capital, according to reporting from Sheel Monat. The performance was heavily concentrated: Altimeter led Snowflake's Series C at a $260 million post-money valuation in 2015, and that stake was worth $4.4 billion at Snowflake's IPO—a stark illustration of power-law returns in venture.
Brad Gerstner started Altimeter with just $3 million in February 2008, a timing that proved fortuitous as the early vintage matured through the cloud infrastructure boom. The Snowflake bet alone accounts for a meaningful portion of the fund's outperformance, making it difficult to isolate how much of the 61% IRR came from that single company versus the broader portfolio.
The returns are particularly notable because they span a period when much of the industry faced headwinds. Gerstner's hedge fund took losses during the 2022 selloff when SaaS valuations collapsed and long tech positions suffered. But the VC fund's vintage-year returns suggest the core investment thesis—backing cloud infrastructure and data platforms at early stages—was sound enough to weather and ultimately overcome market cycles.