Hedge Funds
Ex-Sequoia equities chief Jeff Wang's Augnition raises more than $1bn for tech hedge fund
The Menlo Park long-short manager is one of the year's most closely watched launches, with filings pointing to at least $570m at the start of trading.
HedgeWeekly Hedge Fund Desk ·
Augnition Global Investors, the technology-focused hedge fund started by former Sequoia Capital global equities head Jeff Wang, has gathered more than $1 billion, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Regulatory filings cited in that report show the firm began with at least $570 million, roughly 45% of it from internal sources such as the founders and staff.
Wang ran Sequoia's global equities business for about a decade. In a LinkedIn post cited by Business Insider, he said the unit grew from $600 million to more than $9 billion under his watch and averaged annual returns above 17%. His Sequoia years included exposure to late-stage private names such as ByteDance, SpaceX, Stripe and Airbnb, and earlier in his career he spent time at Tiger Asia and TPG.
Augnition plans to run a long-short book in listed technology stocks alongside private-company positions. Wang's second-in-command is Alan Lo, previously a partner at SRS Investment Management, and the launch team includes a CFO from Hurricane Capital and partners drawn from Crescent Park Management and Kodai Capital. The fund dominated conversation at Morgan Stanley's investor gathering at the Breakers in Palm Beach earlier this year, where attendees expected a raise of at least $1 billion.
Why it matters: a billion-dollar-plus debut for a single-manager tech fund arrives in a week when Goldman Sachs prime data show hedge funds cutting technology exposure at the fastest rate in a decade. For allocators, the heavy founder and staff co-investment and the blend of public and private holdings are the features to weigh, since mixed liquidity structures demand close scrutiny of redemption terms and valuation policy.