The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 35 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Gerstner: Altimeter projected Cursor could exit the year at $10B revenue
“Our own, ah, projections were that they could exit this year at up to ten billion dollars of revenue, so they were growing very fast, ah, ah, one of the leading coding agents.”
Gerstner: Altimeter pushed to sell Lacework despite having hundreds of millions remaining
“We had a company that wasn't performing at the levels that you know, it previously had been. It had been priced at many billions of dollars in, you know, at the peak of Zurb in 20, 21, a company called Lacework. And we ultimately, you know, we pushed to sell t…”
Gerstner: Altimeter banned the term ARR for AI revenues
“I've banned the use of the term ARR within altimeter when we talk about AI revenues, because they're certainly not recurring.”
Gerstner: AI will hit a disillusionment phase, creating a buying opportunity
“We're going to hit a zone of disillusionment where you have a mismatch between supply and demand, and then all the skeptics are going to say, I told you so. The internet's a fad. AI's a fad. Mobile's a fad. It happens in every super cycle. We're going to use t…”
Gerstner: Microsoft, Amazon, and Snowflake will accelerate growth rates in 2024
“We expect our forecast is that Microsoft and Amazon, you know, Snowflake, they'll all accelerate their growth rates this year, right?”
Gerstner: Groq is raising a huge new round and Altimeter is an investor
“Sonny's going to raise a huge new round here. We're happy to be investors with Sonny as well.”
Gerstner: Altimeter backed OpenAI at $260B pre-money valuation
“Altimeter participated along with several others who were reported, and the valuation was like 260 pre which would make it, if all the money were to come in, a 300 post valuation”
Gerstner: Altimeter Lost Money Investing in Cloud Security Startup Lacework
“Altimeter was an investor
with Sutter Hill in a company called Lacework.
Right.
Right.
And it was competing in a very, very similar space.
This was the thesis of Lacework.
Lacework raised a lot of money, too much money, I would argue, you know, at the ti…”
Gerstner: I am holding half my normal equity exposure amid macro uncertainty
“My risk profile is lower than our standard risk profile. What do I mean by that? Very simply, you know, I own half as much as I would normally own at a point in time.”
Gerstner: Altimeter expects four portfolio IPOs, including Cerebras, CoreWeave, and Databricks
“I think we may have four IPOs in the pipeline in the next four to six months. The rumors out there around companies like Cerebris and CoreWeave and Databricks, those are all in our portfolios.”
Gerstner: Altimeter cut directional market exposure from 9 to 3 units of risk
“So we had much lower units of risk. What's that mean? It means we sell some of our longs, or we put edges on, or we add to our short positions so that our net exposure directionally to the market, right, is three units of risk, not the nine units of risk that …”
Gerstner: Altimeter passed on Character.ai due to unsustainable CapEx requirements
“I would say that we looked at both inflection and character. We really liked what we saw at character. We wanted to be involved in it, but it was really hard to underwrite it for exactly this reason. We said the most likely outcome is that they're going to be …”
Gerstner: Altimeter reduced net exposure by adding shorts and trimming longs
“We've turned down our exposures a little bit, taken a little bit of our net exposure, so added to some shorts, taken some of our longs down a little bit”
Gerstner: Tech IPO window is wide open, determined solely by price
“And I've been making this case that the IPO window is wide open. It's just a matter of price.”
Gerstner: Capital Markets Heads Report IPO Pipelines Are Filling
“All those heads of capital markets that I talked to, they all told me their pipelines are filling. I know this because my team is spending more time on road shows.”
Gerstner: Altimeter Passed on Many AI Startups Over Unjustifiable Multiples
“We passed on, you know, on a lot of these companies simply because we couldn't get comfortable with the entry multiples, given how opaque it still is at this moment.”
Gerstner Discloses Altimeter Is a Major Investor in Anduril and ByteDance
“We're a big investors in Andrew. You know, we're big investors in ByteDance.”
Gerstner: Altimeter is leaning back into markets on major down days
“I think from an altimeter perspective, we were pretty cautious, and now we're looking at, again, leaning back into markets on some of these down days where it's big risk off, because I think ultimately the president is going to make deals, you know, Besant is …”
Gerstner: Tariffs are currently impacting all public and venture investments
“It is the most important thing and it is impacting everything that we're looking at both on the public and on the venture side of the business today.”
Gerstner: 60% of ByteDance Shareholders Are US Investors
“Remember, the shareholders in ByteDance, 60% of those are U.S. Investors like Altimeter.”
Gerstner: Altimeter is getting more positive on favored stocks as fear prices in
“We're going to get a little bit more positive on the companies we like the best because we think some of this fear Is now getting priced in.”
Gerstner: Altimeter was one of the largest buyers in CoreWeave's IPO
“As you know we're shareholders in CoreWeave. Since a couple rounds ago, we were one of the largest buyers in the IPO, and we're happy we did.”
Gerstner: Altimeter shorted Target over tariff fears and weak discretionary consumer spending
“On the one hand, we were short a little bit of target because we're worried about tariffs and we're worried about the retail consumer holding up, especially around You know, these highly levered consumers when it comes to housewares and things that Target has …”
Gerstner: Altimeter and NVIDIA invested in OpenAI's $6.5B round
“Open AI. Raised, as you know, six and a half billion dollars this week at like a hundred and fifty billion dollar valuation. We both participated.”
Gerstner confirms Altimeter is in talks to join OpenAI's funding round
“I can confirm that Altimeter is talking with the company, so of course there's some things I can share and things I can't share”
Gerstner: Altimeter Cut Its Peak 70% Big Tech Allocation by Half
“Well, first to say we own them all. Okay. And you know, the second thing I would say is Altimeter's peak exposure to these names was about 70% over the course of the last 12 months. So we had 70% of our dollars at one point in time in these names. Remember, at…”
Gerstner: Altimeter's list of potentially disrupted companies is longest ever
“As an investment firm, as you know, that on the public side, you know, we look at who's going to be disrupted. I think it, you know, this is the list of companies that we have that are potentially disrupted. Is as long as it's ever been, you know, we've, we're…”
Gerstner: Altimeter holds SpaceX shares and expects to buy in IPO
“We're also a shareholder.
you know, we also expect to be buying in the IPO.”
Gerstner: Altimeter led Series A for US rare earth magnet producer
“At Altimeter, we just led the Series A in a company, I don't even know if we've announced it, but I'll announce it here, which is an all-American producer of rare earth magnets, right?”
Gerstner: Altimeter held very little directional long market risk recently
“I said at the end of January, early February, when you and I did the pot, I said, we've taken down our units of risk because there's just more uncertainty in the world. Discount rates need to come up. Multiples are coming down. And we did. And I would say over…”
Gerstner: Investment Banks Are Actively Gauging Buy-Side Interest for Upcoming Tech IPOs
“I'm on the buy side. So when Goldman or Morgan Stanley want to sell one of these things, our phone rings. And they want to check market conditions. They want to check what we're thinking, you know, and then eventually you know, the roadshow occurs, et cetera. …”
Gerstner: Altimeter will reduce exposure if interest rates reach 5% to 5.5%
“If rates were to go to five or five and a half percent and we see that happening, our exposures would come down”
Gerstner: Founders Fund and Altimeter downsized their venture fund sizes
“Founders Fund, Altimeter, a few others have downsized the fund size.”