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The story
Founded by Glenn Hutchins and Roger McNamee in 1999, in Menlo Park.1
Silver Lake was founded in 1999, at the height of the late-1990s technology boom to make private equity investments in mature technology companies as opposed to the startups pursued by venture capitalists. Among the firm's founders were Jim Davidson, who had led the Technology Investment Banking business at Hambrecht & Quist; David Roux, who had an operational and entrepreneurial background, having been chairman and CEO of Liberate Technologies, executive vice president at Oracle Corporation, and senior vice president at Lotus Development; Roger McNamee, as the representative of Integral Capital Partners, a hybrid investment fund that made investments in publicly traded companies and venture capital investments in early-stage startups; and Glenn Hutchins, who came from Blackstone Group, had been a special advisor on economic and healthcare policy in the early Clinton administration, and had worked at Thomas H. Lee Partners.
The firm raised its first fund, Silver Lake Partners, with US$2.3 billion of investor commitments; it was among the best-performing funds of its vintage.
The firm's second fund, Silver Lake Partners II, was raised in 2004 with $3.6 billion of commitments.
The firm's third fund, Silver Lake Partners III, was raised in 2007 with $9.6 billion of commitments. Also in 2007, the firm launched a middle-market investment business, Silver Lake Sumeru, hiring Ajay Shah and the former investment team of Shah Capital Partners. Sumeru completed fundraising for its debut fund in 2008 with $1.1 billion of capital.
In 2011, Silver Lake Kraftwerk was launched to provide growth capital to later-stage companies in technology and tech-enabled businesses across the operations, energy, and resources industries.
After the sale of Skype to Microsoft in 2011, Silver Lake was accused of unfairly depriving Skype employees of an options windfall. At issue was a clause in the Skype employee stock option grant agreement. The repurchase right gave Skype the authority to buy back shares at the grant price, when an employee left the company, even when those shares were vested.
In 2013, the firm raised its fourth fund, Silver Lake Partners IV, which closed in 2013 with $10.3 billion in committed capital.
In 2017, the firm raised its fifth fund, Silver Lake Partners V, which closed at $15 billion of commitments. Jim Davidson retired from the managing partner committee.
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In September 2020, it was announced that Silver Lake was negotiating to invest more than $1 billion in Reliance Retail, an Indian retail company.
In January 2021, the firm raised $20 billion for its sixth fund, Silver Lake Partners VI. In December, Silver Lake purchased a 33.3% stake in the Australian Professional Leagues (APL). The group organizes Australia's national association football leagues (the A-League Men, A-League Women and A-League Youth). Silver Lake also had a stake in City Football Group, which owns A-League club Melbourne City FC. Silver Lake has estimated the value of the APL and its affiliate holdings at over US$300 million.
In May 2024, the firm raised $20.5 billion for its seventh fund, Silver Lake Partners VII.
In August 2025, Silverlake invested $400 million in a joint venture with Commonwealth Asset Management's Adam Fisher and Peter Rumbold to secure powered land for resale to data-center developers.
In September 2026, Silver Lake filed a lawsuit against Carl Icahn and several hedge funds in the Delaware Court of Chancery, seeking to block appraisal claims related to its acquisition of Endeavor Group Holdings.
From Wikipedia’s article on Silver Lake (investment firm), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5