- Billionaire investor Steve Cohen is stepping outside the hedge fund industry and creating a private-markets fund, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
- The fund, named Point72 Hyperscale, will act as a hybrid between a venture capital firm and a private-equity fund and focus on companies in the artificial intelligence space, sources told The Journal.
- Hyperscale aims to raise $500 million to $900 million in 2020, with Cohen as its anchor investor.
- The private-markets fund is Cohen's first investor offering outside the hedge fund space. He previously founded SAC Capital Advisors and Point72 Asset Management.
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Point72 Asset Management founder Steve Cohen is looking beyond the industry that minted him billions of dollars and starting his first private-markets fund, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The venture, deemed Point72 Hyperscale, aims to raise between $500 million and $900 million in 2020 before targeting artificial intelligence-focused companies. Cohen has pitched Hyperscale as a hybrid between a venture capital fund and a private-equity fund, sources familiar with the matter told The Journal.
The new unit could also buy majority stakes in companies with complementary technologies and merge the investments, the sources added. Primary targets for Hyperscale include majority stakes in firms with $10 million to $200 million in annual revenue.
Cohen will serve as Hyperscale's anchor investor. Investor fees and timescales are yet to be determined, The Journal reported. The new venture will be operated by Matthew Granade, who led the creation of investment businesses in Point72, focusing on disruptors in the tech space.
Hyperscale is Cohen's first external offering outside the hedge fund industry. The billionaire rose to fame after his first fund, SAC Capital Advisors, beat the S&P 500 for every year but one between 1993 and 2011. The firm shrank soon after pleading guilty to insider trading in 2013, though Cohen was never criminally charged.
SAC was converted into Point72 as a family office in 2014, and the successor fund reopened to external investors in 2018. Point72 managed $16.1 billion at the start of 2020, according to The Journal.
Hyperscale's concept was first tested through Point72 Ventures, a spinoff of Cohen's hedge fund meant to invest the billionaire's capital in startups, The Journal reported. The private-market unit was founded in 2016 and has since added more than 50 companies to its portfolio.
Sri Chandrasekar and Dan Gwak, who operate Point72 Ventures' AI investments, will run Hyperscale's day-to-day operations, according to The Journal.
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