Permira closes second growth fund at $4 billion

London-based investment house Permira has announced the close of its second Growth Opportunities fund at $4 billion. The late-stage investments fund is more than twice the size of its predecessor and significantly succeeds its initial target of $2.5 billion.

Since its founding in 1985, Permira has assembled 17 various funds, accounting for a total of upwards of €58 billion in assets under management. They’ve made over 250 investments across the technology, consumer, services, and healthcare landscapes, and between 2001 and 2011, returned upwards of $20 billion to their investors.

Traditionally active in the acquisitions game, in 2018 Permira diversified this strategy, giving the technology and digital innovation sector a strong focus with the launch of a minority stake investment vehicle, the Growth Opportunites fund. As a clear signal of confidence from investors, this first fund closed at $1.7 billion in July of 2019. Beneficiaries of this fund include Flixbus, Klarna, Minted, and Zwift, to name a few.

Now in its second iteration, Permira has upped the ante and coming out of the gate with more than double the amount of capital available to invest in high-growth scale-ups. The vehicle has already been used to invest in Spectrum Equity owned outdoors exploration platform AllTrails, seed-stage to pre-IPO company equity management service Carta, customer data management specialist mParticle, and container, kubernetes, and cloud security provider, and card-carrying member of the unicorn club, Sysdig.

While the company refrained from naming any names specifically, Permira does cite, “a well-diversified, long-standing, global investor base comprising blue-chip institutions including pension funds, government entities, and insurance companies,” as backers of the new fund.

“We are fortunate to have partnered with businesses whose founders, management teams, investors, and employees are defining their categories - this fundraise is a testament to their success and our commitment to being a long-term partner of choice for them,” concluded Phil Guinand, Head of Permira Growth Opportunities.