Description
Silver Lake is an American global private equity firm focused on investments in technology, technology-enabled and related industries. Founded in 1999, the firm is one of the largest technology investors in the world. Its investment holdings have included Airbnb, Alibaba Group, Ancestry.com, Broadcom, Credit Karma, City Football Group, Dell Technologies, Endeavor, Expedia Group, Fanatics, First Advantage, Global Blue, GoDaddy, Jio, Lightbox, Motorola Solutions, NortonLifeLock, Red Ventures, Sabre Corporation, Skype, SoFi, GLG, Seagate Technology, SolarWinds, TEG, Twitter, Unity, Waymo, Weld North Education, WP Engine, Vacasa, the A-League football competition in Australia, and ZPG. Silver Lake is headquartered in Silicon Valley, and has offices in New York, London and Hong Kong.
History
Silver Lake was founded in 1999, at the height of the late 1990s technology boom to make private equity investments in mature technology companies as opposed to the startups pursued actively by venture capitalists. Among the firm's founders were Jim Davidson who had led the Technology Investment Banking business at Hambrecht & Quist; David Roux who had an operational and entrepreneurial background having served as chairman and CEO of Liberate Technologies, executive vice president at Oracle Corporation and senior vice president at Lotus Development; Roger McNamee, as the representative of Integral Capital Partners, a hybrid investment fund that made investments in publicly traded companies and venture capital investments in early-stage startups; and Glenn Hutchins, who came from Blackstone Group and served as a Special Advisor on economic and healthcare policy in the early Clinton Administration and previously worked at Thomas H. Lee Partners.
The firm raised its first fund, Silver Lake Partners, with $2.3 billion of investor commitments. Silver Lake's first fund was among the best performing funds of its vintage.
The firm's second fund, Silver Lake Partners II was raised in 2004 with $3.6 billion of commitments.
The firm's third fund, Silver Lake Partners III was raised in 2007 with $9.6 billion of commitments. Also in 2007, the firm launched a middle-market investment business, Silver Lake Sumeru, hiring Ajay Shah and the former investment team of Shah Capital Partners. Sumeru completed fundraising for its debut fund in 2008 with $1.1 billion of capital.
In 2011, Silver Lake Kraftwerk was launched to provide growth capital to later-stage companies in technology and tech-enabled businesses across the operations, energy, and resources industries.
In 2013, the firm raised its fourth fund, Silver Lake Partners IV, which closed in 2013 with $10.3 billion in committed capital.
In 2017, the firm raised its fifth fund, Silver Lake Partners V, which closed at $15 billion of commitments. Jim Davidson retired from the managing partner committee.
In December 2019, Silver Lake appointed Egon Durban and Greg Mondre as Co-CEOs and promoted Joe Osnoss to managing partner. Silver Lake announced Ken Hao as chairman and Mike Bingle vice chairman and managing partner emeritus, with the launch of Silver Lake Partners VI.
In September 2020, it was announced that Silver Lake was having negotiations to invest over $1 billion in Indian retail company Reliance Retail.
In 2021, Silver Lake purchased a minority 33.3% stake in the Australian Professional Leagues, otherwise known as the APL. The group is responsible for organising Australia's national association football leagues, being the A-League Men, A-League Women and A-League Youth. Silver Lake has estimated the value of the APL and its affiliate holdings at over US$300 million.
