Technology investment firm Silver Lake announced a final closing on Silver Lake Partners VII at $20.5 billion in capital commitments, which topped the prior flagship fund. Over the past five years, Silver Lake has raised $47 billion in aggregate to create value by partnering with exceptional founders and management teams to build and grow great companies driven by technology at scale.
In the past 15 years, Silver Lake’s flagship funds have generated an aggregate 21% rate of return, net of fees. Since the beginning of last year, distributions to Silver Lake’s investors—including anticipated proceeds based on portfolio company transaction agreements signed to date—will total approximately $20 billion, anchored by the record-setting sale of Silver Lake portfolio company VMware to Broadcom.
For the investment side over the past year, Silver Lake completed a public tender offer to acquire Software AG for about $2.6 billion and led three other transformational transactions: the take private of Qualtrics in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $12.5 billion, a $6.4 billion equity re-investment with DigitalBridge in Vantage Data Centers across North America and EMEA, and an agreement to take Endeavor private at an equity value of $13 billion and a consolidated enterprise value of $25 billion.
Silver Lake also recently announced that Christian Lucas (a Managing Director and co-head of the firm’s activities in Europe) has been named a Managing Partner. And Jim Whitehurst, who was previously a Senior Advisor to Silver Lake before being named Interim CEO at Unity, has returned to Silver Lake as a Managing Director who will lead operating and investment team initiatives.
Silver Lake invests across a wide spectrum of the global technology sector in technology-enabled businesses in verticals including sports and live events, media and entertainment, e-commerce, financial services, and health care. Its portfolio of companies represents more than $1 trillion of cumulative enterprise value.
Silver Lake Partners VII investors include public and corporate pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, endowments, foundations, funds of funds, family offices, technology industry leaders, and individual investors across the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and EMEA.
KEY QUOTE:
“We are deeply grateful to each of our investors, new and returning, for the confidence they place in Silver Lake. We are similarly appreciative of the truly special management teams we are so fortunate work with – the world’s best – with whom we have cultivated successful and winning relationships based on deep engagement and trust through multiple cycles of technology investing at scale.”
“As the promises and risks of the AI era accelerate, our talented team, strong industry network, and ability to commit substantial strategic and operational resources means our horizon of opportunity to make highly select, impactful investments with the potential to generate exceptional performance has never been more compelling. We look forward to many more years of collaboration, partnership and sustained value creation together.”
– Silver Lake Co-CEOs Egon Durban and Greg Mondre on behalf of the firm’s Managing Partners
