Tiger Global ran its hedge fund unhedged on growth tech — and lost $17 billion

Tiger Global Management, the crossover fund run by Chase Coleman, built its returns in 2020 and 2021 on concentrated long positions in high-growth, high-multiple public technology stocks, extended further by aggressive late-stage venture bets — Tiger backed roughly one startup a day in 2021 at valuations set during the peak. The hedge fund carried little downside protection: for a fund with 'hedge' in its name, the strategy relied on stock-picking conviction rather than shorting or hedges against a market-wide reversal.

In early 2022, Federal Reserve rate increases and a broad selloff in growth stocks hit Tiger's concentrated book directly, compounded by a regulatory crackdown on Chinese tech companies where the fund had historically been heavily weighted. By early May, the flagship hedge fund had lost about $17 billion since January, a decline of roughly 43.7% in four months and one of the largest dollar losses ever recorded by a single hedge fund manager. It finished 2022 down about 56%, and a related long-only fund fell around 67%, together erasing more than $41 billion.

The private side was hit too. Having overcapitalized startups at 2021 valuations, Tiger's venture funds wrote down their bets by roughly 33% for 2022 — about $23 billion in portfolio value, including $9 billion in the second half of the year alone. Stripe, valued at $1.6 billion in mid-2022, was later revalued near half that when the company raised its next round.

The losses erased roughly two-thirds of the gains the fund had produced since its 2001 launch and triggered senior departures, including investors John Curtius, Connie Lee and Sam Harland by late 2022. Coleman kept the firm running and it recovered with gains in 2023 and 2024, but the episode remains the largest dollar loss by a single hedge fund manager on record at the time.