Gerstner says Altimeter's investment thesis for two years has been correlation to intelligence improvements.
“The overarching theme now for two years at Altimeter is we wanna be positively correlated to improvements in intelligence.”
Gerstner reveals Altimeter invested in NVIDIA in December 2022, up 10x as revenue grew from $30B to over $200B.
“The stock's up over ten ten times. 10 x over that period of time as the revenue went from roughly $30,000,000,000 a year to over $200,000,000,000 a year.”
Gerstner says Altimeter's peak exposure to major tech stocks was 70% and they've taken almost half off.
“Altimeter's peak exposure to these names was about 70% over the course of the last twelve months. So we had 70% of our dollars at one point in time in these names.”
Gerstner says Altimeter's NVIDIA numbers remain well above Street consensus for this year.
“Our numbers are still well above the street for this year. I think there's a lot of doubt. You know, the the common, discussion at the end of last year”
Gerstner launched Altimeter in 2008 with promised funding from endowments despite the financial crisis.
“I had, you know, I had some endowments who had promised me some money at the end of two thousand and seven, but this is a good lesson, starting any business, right?”
Gerstner reveals Altimeter has passed on 75 AI investment opportunities in the last twelve months.
“Today to me, you know, we've passed on 75 AI businesses over the course of the last twelve months that we've looked at, not because we don't think those are good founders or maybe even good business models,”
Gerstner reveals Altimeter tracked 100 potential IPOs in 2021, three in 2022, and zero in 2023 year-to-date.
“So that was 46 in 2020, a 100 in 2021, three in 2022, and zero year to date in 2023.”
Gerstner reveals Altimeter held an investor day before ChatGPT's release focused on cloud data migration and AI applications.
“We hosted an investor day last year before chat GPT came out, and the the the thesis or the theme of the investor day was all the world's data moving to the cloud, augmented and intelligent applications being built on top of it.”
Gerstner distributed $6B last year, exceeding total capital raised in first five funds.
“Last year, we distributed over $6,000,000,000, which was more than all the venture we raised in our first five funds.”
Gerstner argues Altimeter's SPAC approach takes companies public faster by acting as owners rather than agents.
“We don't act like agents, we act like owners. We're totally aligned with you. So I mean, we can get you public in a fraction of the time,”
Gerstner says Altimeter's SPAC model lets founders set their own price and select their shareholders.
“You set the price, you tell the story with forward looking forecasts. We serve up a world class group of mutual funds and hedge funds as your shareholders. You ring the bell, it's your IPO.”
Gerstner emphasizes Altimeter charges zero fees to companies going public via SPAC.
“And while the day of the IPO and the day after the IPO are nearly identical as if a bank took you public, we don't charge your company a fee. None. Zero.”
Gerstner emphasizes Altimeter's SPAC charges companies zero fees while delivering outcomes identical to traditional bank IPOs.
“while the day of the IPO and the day after the IPO are nearly identical as if a bank took you public, we don't charge your company a fee. None. Zero.”