Tiger Global Blames ‘Disgruntled Former Employee’ For Mystery Memo

Tiger Global responded on Friday to an anonymous memo circulating among journalists that makes a number of serious and unsubstantiated claims about the investment firm and its leadership.

In a letter sent to the firm’s investors on Friday afternoon obtained by Forbes, Tiger wrote that it was being “targeted with a series of information attacks” propagated “anonymously using an encrypted messaging platform.” “We strongly believe [they] were written and pushed by a disgruntled former employee with whom we parted ways,” the letter, signed by “The Tiger Global Team,” added.

Tiger Global spokesperson Carolyn Sargent confirmed the letter’s authenticity but declined further comment.

In its letter, the firm said it has “engaged with experts” to develop a response to the “malicious attacks,” which it claims have also reached many of its own clients. “Unlike the anonymous coward spreading this false narrative on the internet, you know who we are — and we are here and ready to answer your questions,” the company wrote.

Tiger’s letter is the firm’s first external acknowledgement of an extraordinary situation that has simmered for months, and recently started to boil over. Industry insiders within the venture capital and private equity communities in which Tiger operates first received versions of a memo about Tiger as long as six months ago, several recipients said. Over the past several months, multiple Forbes reporters also received the memo, sent in the form of a long message over the secure messaging app Signal from one-name accounts that were immediately deleted. Reporters at other publications have also said they received a version of the memo.

The memo criticized Tiger’s financial performance and the behavior of members of the firm’s leadership, and questioned its ability to operate moving forward. Forbes has not substantiated any of those claims, which Tiger called “packed with lies” in its letter, and thus will not publish their specifics at this time.

More recently, another version of the memo claiming to be a draft article from The New Yorker appeared to enter wider circulation among hedge funds and financial institutions. (The memo didn’t appear to be written by a journalist, several sources noted, nor was there any suggestion the memo was a genuine draft by a media publication.)

Tiger’s letter to its LPs comes days after The Information reported the firm was selling a stake in AI unicorn Cohere, after facing a liquidity crunch as its public equities take substantial losses. In June, Tiger raised $2 billion for a new venture capital firm, per a regulatory filing, well short of its reported intended target. Last October, Forbes first reported that the partner behind many of Tiger’s private startup investments, former Midas List member John Curtius, was departing the firm.

In its note to investors, Tiger appeared to seek to reassure its backers about the firm’s prospects: “Rest assured our team remains highly focused on our core business which has been performing well this year,” the letter claimed.