Altimeter is a leading technology-focused investment firm built by founders for founders. Our mission is to help visionary entrepreneurs build iconic companies, disrupt markets and improve lives through all stages of growth. Altimeter manages a variety of venture and public funds and serves as an expert long-term partner to companies as they enter the public markets. At Altimeter, essentialism is not just the flavor of the day - it’s an ongoing practice. It’s a key to our culture whether thinking about organization, compensation, our portfolio, our investor base and the balance between our work and personal lives. We believe strong cultures require repetition. Our highly focused team has extensive operational, financial, venture capital and capital markets experience. We are excited and honored to back the entrepreneurs and companies that will help move our global economy forward while making a positive impact in our communities along the way.
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This week on Clouded Judgement: From Data Quantity to Data Quality - Median software multiple: 4.9x - High Growth software median: 27.4x - Mid Growth software median: 7.3x - Low Growth software median: 3.8x - 10Y: 4.0% https://lnkd.in/dNsTWdeC
Brad Gerstner, Altimeter Founder and CEO, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the latest market trends, state of the AI tech race, concerns over an AI bubble, and more. 📽️ https://lnkd.in/eqF6tU2i
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Huge congrats to the dbt Labs and Fivetran teams on their merger! Cant wait to see what they accomplish together The combined company will have ~$600m ARR and north of 10k customers https://lnkd.in/gntkD3_f
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AI Travel’s First Inning: App Store Connectors, Clunky Handoffs, And Who Owns Discovery It appears the first run at AI travel distribution is landing squarely in the “app store” model: OTAs as enabled apps/connectors (MCP-style plugins) inside ChatGPT that you can query natively. That’s the right shape of the future, just not the feel yet What’s working Supply pipes are finally reachable from the assistant. Being able to call Expedia and Booking from within ChatGPT is a meaningful step toward real-time pricing/availability without forcing users to context-switch. This is the connective tissue I expected as LLMs move from informational to agent. Partnering buys time. In the short term, partnering with the incumbents prevents data shut-offs and accelerates coverage while the ecosystem sorts out standards (MCP, tool schemas, settlement). What’s not (yet) Latency kills conversion: In my testing, Expedia Group took ~2 minutes from ask → think → connect → show results. That’s a non-starter at checkout. The flow isn’t end-to-end: You still click “Book on Expedia.” Every extra hop is drop-off. The magic trick of an agentic future is discovery → selection → payment → servicing in one continuous conversation, not a referral link with an off-ramp. Brand minimization:. Search used to hand users to a branded surface (Expedia.com) where loyalty can compound via UX. In a connector world, #ChatGPT owns the information layer and the UI. If OTAs are reduced to a “book” button, they’re functionally payment/servicing rails which is an expensive role for a 10–20% take rate. “But app stores and search had guidelines too…” True the iOS App Store and Google search both constrained brand expression. The difference here is who owns the intermediary step. In mobile or web, OTAs still controlled room selection pages, image galleries, maps, and merchandising. With connectors, the OTA doesn’t even fully own that step; it’s increasingly just fulfillment. That’s a worse strategic position over time. What consumers actually want Not a referral click. They want the assistant to finish the job: select the suite, apply loyalty, pay, then be on the hook for changes, re-shops, and service disruptions. The uncomfortable truth This first inning feels like Custom GPTs with better branding: useful, but not the right answer yet. I don’t want a referral link; I just want it done. And when assistants actually own discovery and execution end-to-end, the rent paid to intermediaries that don’t control discovery will compress. Full Post: https://lnkd.in/gp8_gY-m
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This week on Clouded Judgement: OpenAI Has its App Store Moment - Median software multiple: 5.1x - High Growth software median: 30.2x - Mid Growth software median: 7.4x - Low Growth software median: 4.0x - 10Y: 4.1% https://lnkd.in/exrjygpv
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Power is the backbone of progress. For AI, for homes, for the economy. The U.S. needs an all-of-the-above strategy: production, storage, transmission. Base Power Company $1B raise is a big step toward turning distributed energy into national strength. Congrats to Zach Dell Justin Lopas and team on all the progress. Join the Charge! 🇺🇸 ⚡ 🔋
Today we are announcing our $1B Series C, but money isn’t the story. The story is what we’ll do with it, and the scale of the challenge ahead. Our mission isn’t constrained by capital, supply, or demand. It’s constrained by talent. To build America’s next great power company, we need the engineers, operators, and creatives ready to take on the challenge to join us. Power is the most important product in the world. It runs through everything: our homes, hospitals, schools, factories, and future. And the grid that delivers it is breaking. At Base, we’re building the future of power so human progress can accelerate. In the past two years, we’ve grown from an idea into one of the fastest growing energy companies in America. Now we’re entering a new phase of growth. Our first manufacturing site is rising in the heart of Austin, inside the former Austin American-Statesman printing press. Here we’ll build our own hardware to meet surging demand and scale nationwide. This is a key step in putting a battery on every home in the country. Few teams get to say their work powers human progress. We do. With a billion dollars of fuel, our next wave of growth will be defined not by capital, but by people who choose to step up, take ownership, and build the next great American power company. The old system is breaking. Come build the new one. Our Series C was led by Addition, with participation from both new and existing investors including Trust Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Thrive Capital, Lightspeed, Andreessen Horowitz, Altimeter, StepStone, Elad Gil, 137 Ventures, Terrain, Waybury, Ribbit, CapitalG, Spark, BOND, Lowercarbon, Avenir, Glade Brook, Positive Sum, and 1789.
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Very excited to continue to back ClickHouse! The momentum has been impressive. >2k customers and >4x YoY ARR growth, yet somehow it still feels like it's early days!
Excited to announce the extension of our Series C and the expansion of our leadership team at ClickHouse! >2,000 customers on ClickHouse Cloud, quadrupled ARR Y/Y, adding companies like Anthropic, Cyera, LangChain, MasOrange, Meta, Sierra, Supabase, Vercel, Weights & Biases, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and many more to the list of organizations building their AI-powered businesses on top of ClickHouse. Many thanks to our new investors: Citi (Vibhor Rastogi), Insight Partners (John Wolff), Peak XV Partners (Shailendra J Singh), Founders Circle Capital (Mike J.) The D. E. Shaw Group (Jazmin Medina), Adams Street Partners (Fred Wang), Rosberg Ventures (Nico Rosberg), Expanding Capital (Jonathan Shriftman), and San Francisco 49ers' Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffrey, and Kyle Juszczyk, and existing investors Altimeter (Jamin Ball), Bessemer Venture Partners (Byron Deeter), IVP (Cack Wilhelm), BOND (Jay Simons), and GIC (Lihan Chen). We're also thrilled to welcome our new executives Kevin Egan (CRO), Mariah Nagy (VP of People), and Jimmy Sexton (CFO)! https://lnkd.in/gQhgHs6S
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This week on Clouded Judgement: The New RL Training Grounds - Median software multiple: 5.1x - High Growth software median: 27.0x - Mid Growth software median: 7.8x - Low Growth software median: 3.9x - 10Y: 4.1% https://lnkd.in/d8JAiXqY
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🥗 DoorDash TAM Expansion and a Push into POS Systems? With the Dash Forward 2025 event revealing a ton of new product announcements I wanted to do an overview of DoorDash’s TAM expansion efforts over the past several years as well as dig into what I think is coming down the pipeline: a restaurant/retail POS system push. The company revealed a bunch of new additions to the platform including restaurant bookings, DoorDash Dot autonomous delivery robot, DashMart Fulfillment Services, expanded grocery access, and a slew of app updates. Among competitors DoorDash has continued to accelerate the second derivative of absolute $ growth in GTV through a deliberate focus on TAM expansion outside of core restaurant delivery. 📊 DoorDash TAM For a business that started with a hyper focus on the core restaurant delivery market in the US, we’ve come a long way. Back when DoorDash filed for an IPO they identified a rough TAM of $302B based on total off-premise food consumption in the United States. Fast forward 5 years and by my estimate that TAM has more than doubled to $676B once you add in all the other segments, focuses, and opportunities that they’re focused on. 🔗 Charts, Graphs, and Full Deep Dive: https://lnkd.in/gJwZNZMg 👩🍳 DoorDash Restaurant POS? Remember that Uber was working on a POS system awhile back that eventually got cancelled, and it wouldn’t surprise me if DoorDash is still doing so. A full POS system would enable DoorDash to push deeper into the stack and capture some of the $12-20k per restaurant that other POS systems get. Evidence of DoorDash Building a Restaurant POS called “Carte” Dec 2021: Bbot filed trademark for Restaurant POS called “Carte” Mar 2022: Acquisition of Bbot to Bolster In-Store Digital Ordering Jun 2023: Report on DoorDash building a POS called “Carte POS” Mar 2025: DoorDash patent for NFC Tap-to-Pay Mar 2025: Continued rumors about “Carte POS” in a 2025 Industry Blog May 2025: Acquisiton of SevenRooms building out Reservations, Marketing, Loyalty, and Table Management Jun 2025: DoorDash hiring Global Sourcing Manager for “custom-built private label tablets and smart devices” July 2025: Rumors on Reddit of a DoorDash POS live in San Francisco from a Restauranteur Today: Job opening in Merchant Platform Innovation for an “exciting new confidential initiative” 🔺 Challenges for DoorDash The biggest challenge is a lot of hesitation from restaurant owners to have their POS and system-of-record being run by their biggest demand generation platform. For the same reason hoteliers wouldn’t use an OTA for their PMS a restauranteur wants separation from DoorDash on the back end of the house. There’s also switching costs and complexity, data ownership, and rate-parity complications. Can merchants negotiate marketplace take-rates if the POS is bundled? How can I trust my main demand funnel to not screw me over once I’m locked into a POS? Links to sources in full blog
AI companies are scaling faster than any we’ve seen in software history—some going from $0 to $100M ARR in record time. But as Altimeter partner Jamin Ball explains, speed alone doesn’t equal durability. In his recent piece Easy Come, Easy Go, Jamin highlights why rapid sales cycles and fast implementations, while exciting, can also be red flags: 📉Short cycles may mean buyers aren’t fully committed. ⚙️Light implementations risk easier rip-and-replace. 💵Experimental “run rate revenue” isn’t the same as sticky ARR. The key? Look beyond topline growth. Gross retention, customer cohorts, and depth of integration tell a truer story of whether revenue will last. As Jamin puts it, today’s AI surge is historic—but separating experiments from enduring businesses is what will define the next generation of multi-billion-dollar companies. Watch Jamin’s interview with The Information’s TITV