When an investment opportunity exceeded what its core funds could take on, Antler needed a way to bring institutional capital alongside it. The result was a $15 million Singapore vehicle and another step in the firm’s growing co-investment strategy.
Antler is best known for investing at the very beginning of a company’s journey. The firm operates across 27 cities and 22 countries, with 13 geographically focused funds and close to $1 billion in assets under management dedicated to making first investments into companies.
Alongside its early-stage strategy sits Antler Elevate, its global growth fund focused on Series A and Series B investments. Its first fund was $285 million, while its second fund is currently fundraising now to exceed the sizing from their prior fund. But Antler’s involvement with a company doesn’t necessarily end at the early stage.
As portfolio companies scale and raise larger rounds, Antler can find itself with access to significant follow-on allocations. In some cases, those opportunities are larger than its core funds can take on without affecting portfolio construction or concentration. That raised an important question for Christopher Walsh, who helps lead Antler Elevate: how could Antler continue backing high-conviction companies while bringing its institutional LPs alongside it?
For Christopher Walsh, who helps lead Antler Elevate, that raised an important question.
“Do we say no to the founder and only take XYZ, or should we actually build out this underlying strategy that allows us to facilitate larger transactions with a lot of our institutional LPs?”
That question helped shape Antler’s approach to co-investments.
When an opportunity outgrows the fund
A late-stage leading AI infrastructure company became a clear example of where that strategy could be put to work.
Given the size of its underlying funds, taking the entire exposure directly was not practical. A co-investment structure provided another route for Antler to participate while bringing additional institutional capital into the opportunity.
Given Antler’s global footprint, the team looked to establish a vehicle that could sit alongside its existing entity structures and support the opportunity.
For Antler, the opportunity was compelling. The challenge was building the infrastructure around it.
The team already had a well-established process for co-investments in the US, where legal formation and fund administration could move through familiar partners and workflows. Singapore was different. Antler was establishing the structure from scratch without the same institutional knowledge of the local legal and tax environment. Antler – Feature Story
That meant working across Antler’s own Singapore team, Auptimate and external advisers to get the transaction completed.
Building a $15M vehicle around the deal
Antler worked with Auptimate to establish a Singapore Syndicate SPV.
The relationship started through a recommendation from one of Christopher’s partners in Singapore. As the transaction progressed, however, it was Auptimate’s ability to adapt to the requirements of the deal that became particularly important. Antler – Feature Story
This was not a standard SPV setup. The transaction involved institutional requirements, external legal counsel and documentation that needed to accommodate the specifics of the deal.
Rather than forcing the transaction into a predetermined process, the Auptimate team worked with Antler and the other parties involved to adapt where required.
For Christopher, that flexibility stood out.
“The underlying flexibility with your team to augment a lot of your processes to get it through to the finish line, I thought, was fantastic.”
There were unfamiliar requirements on both sides, and Christopher acknowledged that Auptimate was willing to do work behind the scenes to keep the transaction moving.
“I was keenly aware of some of the things that you guys were willing to do in the background, which I think ultimately allowed us to get it to the finish line.”
For a transaction involving institutional stakeholders, that ability to adapt mattered. The underlying structure still needed to work, but so did the processes around it.
Flexibility when the standard process isn’t enough
The experience highlighted an important difference between smaller syndicate transactions and larger institutional co-investments.
For institutional investors, the vehicle itself may be familiar, but the process around it can involve additional layers of review. Legal, tax and distribution requirements may need to be considered by multiple advisers, while investor protections may need to be reflected in documentation.
Christopher’s view is that those requirements do not necessarily need to become obstacles. What matters is introducing the structure and standard documentation early enough for investors and their advisers to become familiar with it, then having a process for dealing with genuine changes when they arise.
As he explained, larger institutions naturally bring a different level of scrutiny to areas such as distributions, tax and legal protections. The ability to accommodate those questions without losing momentum can therefore become an important part of executing the transaction.
Making room for the opportunities that don’t fit neatly into a fund
The transaction reflects the broader reason Antler has been developing its co-investment strategy.
As companies in its portfolio grow, Antler can find itself with access to allocations that are attractive but too large for the underlying fund to absorb in full. Co-investment vehicles give the firm another way to pursue those opportunities while allowing institutional LPs to participate alongside it.
For this transaction, that meant establishing a Singapore vehicle around a significant special opportunity and adapting the process to the requirements of the institutional parties involved.
For Auptimate, it was also an example of what supporting larger and more complex private-market transactions can require. The digital infrastructure matters, but so does the ability to work alongside managers and their advisers when a deal does not fit neatly into a standard process.
The result was an institutionally-sized Singapore vehicle that enabled Antler to pursue an opportunity beyond what its core fund could accommodate on its own.
And for Christopher, the experience opened the door to doing more together.
“Really appreciate all the work that you guys did for this one. Hopefully we can be a good partner for you guys going forward.”