Altimeter Capital
Brad Gerstner's crossover technology investor managing public equity and private growth funds from Menlo Park, backing category-defining software and internet companies.
Typical check size
$1M-$10M (stage-based estimate)
Founded
2008
Headquarters
Menlo Park, CA
AUM
N/A
Rounds they lead
Series B+
Rounds they invest
Series A
Series B+
Portfolio companies we track
Startups in our directory that list Altimeter Capital as an investor (19 total).
- Anthropic AI safety company building Claude frontier models, API, and enterprise agents for coding and knowledge work.
- Base Power U.S.-made residential batteries and energy plans that aggregate into a virtual power plant — grid flexibility at the edge of the home.
- Baseten AI inference platform for deploying, serving, and autoscaling production models with OpenAI-compatible APIs.
- Benchling R&D cloud platform — the operating system for life science labs.
- Castelion Hypersonic weapons and defense manufacturing startup in the American Dynamism set.
- Cerebras Wafer-scale AI chips and inference cloud — CS-3 systems and Cerebras Inference API for training and production LLM serving.
- dbt Labs Analytics engineering platform — dbt transforms warehouse data into tested metrics layers.
- Deel Global payroll and compliance platform for hiring and paying international teams.
- Hadrian Automated precision manufacturing factories for aerospace and defense parts.
- Inferact Company behind vLLM — open-source LLM inference engine used by Meta, Google, and Character.ai in production.
- Inngest Durable step-function platform for serverless workflows and AI agent orchestration.
- Loft Brazilian proptech marketplace digitizing residential buying, selling, and financing.
- Motherduck Cloud analytics platform built around DuckDB for hybrid local/cloud SQL.
- OfferUp Mobile marketplace for local peer-to-peer buying and selling of household goods in the U.S.
- OpenAI Frontier AI lab behind ChatGPT, GPT models, and API platform for developers and enterprises.
- Starburst Enterprise Trino SQL engine for querying data without moving it to a warehouse.
- StockX Detroit-based authenticated marketplace for sneakers, streetwear, collectibles, and more.
- Tabular Apache Iceberg table format company for open lakehouse storage.
- XBOW Autonomous offensive security platform that continuously pentests applications with AI agents.
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Volta Infra's $300M at $2.4B: a16z and Altimeter Back an AI Neocloud Built Like Project Finance
Jul 25, 2026
Seattle Startups We Cover 2026: Enterprise, AI Infra, Space & Defense
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Aug 6–7 VC News: Hadrian Factories, Moove Robotaxis, Agent Infra & Biotech
Aug 6, 2026
Hadrian's $1.37B at ~$8B: Defense Factories, Not Defense Weapons
Aug 5, 2026
August 4–5 VC Roundup: $1B Checks for Nuclear and Home Batteries, Plus Agents, Neoclouds, and LatAm Seed Records
FAQs about Altimeter Capital
Stage fit, check size, thesis, and how founders typically approach this firm — based on public sources and our directory.
Altimeter Capital focuses on growth equity and late-stage private rounds (Series B and beyond), often leading or taking large positions. The firm also holds public-market stakes in technology companies through its crossover hedge fund.
For private growth investments, Altimeter typically deploys roughly $10M–$200M per deal depending on stage and conviction. The firm is not a seed investor; check size scales with category-leadership potential.
Altimeter Capital is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with additional offices in Boston. The firm invests globally in technology companies across both private and public markets.
Altimeter targets high-growth software, internet, cloud infrastructure, fintech, and AI platforms. The firm seeks category-defining businesses with durable competitive advantages and paths to public-market scale.
Altimeter frequently leads or co-leads growth rounds and can anchor pre-IPO financings. Its crossover model allows continued support after IPO through the public fund.
In our directory, Altimeter Capital is linked to OpenAI (/startup/openai), Deel (/startup/deel), dbt Labs (/startup/dbt-labs), Benchling (/startup/benchling), MotherDuck (/startup/motherduck), Starburst (/startup/starburst), Tabular (/startup/tabular), Loft (/startup/loft), Hadrian (/startup/hadrian), Inferact (/startup/inferact), Inngest (/startup/inngest), Base Power (/startup/base-power), Castelion (/startup/castelion), and OfferUp (/startup/offerup).
Altimeter engages founders who are raising substantial growth rounds with clear category leadership. Introductions typically come from prior investors, bankers, or peer founders; the firm does not operate a seed-stage application process.
See our OpenAI financing coverage (/2026-openai-110b-private-round) and linked startup profiles from /fund/altimeter-capital for companies where Altimeter participated in growth rounds.