The Venture Codex Logo

The Venture Codex

Silver Lake

2775 Sand Hill Road, Suite 100, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, United States

Overview

Silver Lake is a global technology investment firm focused solely on making large-scale investments in leading technology companies.

Total investments
58
Lead investments
33
Investments · 12mo
2
Active investors
11

Sector focus

  • Finance
  • Financial Services
  • FinTech
  • Information Technology
  • Venture Capital
Visit website

Investment portfolio

  • Waymo

    Participated · Equity · Feb 2026

    Waymo develops and operates fully driverless robotaxis, offering on-demand rides across multiple U.S. metropolitan areas. Its fleet now delivers roughly 400,000 rides each week in six major cities, and the company more than tripled annual volume in 2025 to 15 million rides, surpassing 20 million lifetime trips. Having secured permits to charge for rides in California, Waymo has expanded from its original Phoenix deployment to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, and Miami. The firm plans to enter more than a dozen additional international cities in 2026, including London and Tokyo, and is “laying the groundwork” for operations in 20+ further locations. Waymo positions itself as past the proof-of-concept stage and focused on global scale. The latest financing values the company at $126 billion and provides capital to grow vehicle supply, broaden geographic coverage, and reinforce operational infrastructure. Regulatory scrutiny remains, with U.S. safety agencies investigating recent incidents involving the fleet.

  • Carbon

    Led · Equity · Nov 2025

    Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Redwood City, CA, Carbon offers an integrated platform of Digital Light Synthesis (DLS) 3D printers, proprietary resins, and design/automation software that lets customers manufacture end-use polymer components at scale. The company’s technology is deployed across multiple industries, evidenced by millions of 3D-printed adidas footwear components, football helmet pads that have topped NFL/NFLPA safety tests for six consecutive years, and hundreds of thousands of cycling saddles for brands such as Fizik and Trek. In the dental market, customers print millions of custom parts per week, and Carbon printers have been ranked the most reliable by the National Association of Dental Laboratories for the past six years. Carbon continues to launch new hardware, materials, and flexible software tools, including a recently released flexible partial denture material. Management reports rising production volumes and efficiency gains that have the business on the verge of cash-flow-positive operations. The fresh capital will be used to expand manufacturing capacity and accelerate its product roadmap, reinforcing its position as a leader in digital manufacturing.

  • Vantage Data Centers

    Led · Equity · Jan 2025

    Vantage Data Centers builds and operates hyperscale data center campuses for the world’s leading AI and cloud providers. The company delivers capacity across North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific and emphasizes speed and scale in deployment and operations. Vantage is accelerating its APAC expansion after securing a $1.6 billion investment to scale its regional platform, led by affiliates of GIC and ADIA with DigitalBridge participating. Planned growth includes the acquisition of Yondr Group’s 300MW+ Sedenak campus in Johor, Malaysia, which will be known as JHB1 and add significant hyperscale capacity. With the Johor addition, Vantage’s APAC operational and planned IT capacity will reach 1GW across Australia, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The company highlights sustainability features such as direct-to-chip liquid cooling and EDGE certification pursuit, and expects the investment and acquisition to close in Q4 2025. Vantage Data Centers builds and operates hyperscale data center campuses and provides capacity to cloud and AI customers. The company raised €640 million in euro-denominated securitized term notes plus €80 million in unfunded Variable Funding Notes in this transaction. Proceeds will refinance four fully leased German data centers (two in Offenbach/Frankfurt and two in Berlin) and support capital expenditures and broader corporate initiatives. Vantage said the refinancing is intended to accelerate its EMEA expansion and speed time to market to meet mounting AI and cloud demand. The notes have an anticipated five-year repayment date and carry ratings (Class A-2: A-; Class B: BBB) from Standard & Poor’s and Scope Ratings. Over the last year Vantage has raised €2.2 billion in new debt financing for its EMEA platform and previously completed the first-ever EMEA data center ABS in sterling. Vantage develops and operates hyperscale data center campuses across North America, EMEA and APAC, providing power, cooling, protection and connectivity for large cloud and enterprise customers. In 2024 the company expanded into new markets (including Ohio and Ireland), broke ground on six campuses, and opened 11 facilities. Planned and existing global capacity surpassed 2.6GW across 35 campuses in 14 countries and 21 markets. The company secured more than $13 billion in debt and equity investments in 2024 to fund its expansion. Vantage’s global headcount exceeded 1,700 employees at year end, a 32% increase year over year. The company is pursuing net zero carbon emissions by 2030 and reported a Total Recordable Incident Rate of 0.26 in 2024. Vantage powers, cools, protects and connects the technology of hyperscalers, cloud providers and large enterprises and develops and operates data centers across five continents including North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific. The company focuses on delivering reliable, efficient and sustainable hyperscale data center campuses in flexible environments that can scale with market demand. Vantage’s EMEA portfolio includes approximately 2.5GW of IT capacity that is operational or in development. The announced capital will expand the company’s investor base and capital sources to support delivery of additional high-quality, sustainable campuses. The company said GIC and MEAG will invest a combined €1.4 billion ($1.5 billion USD) into its EMEA data center platform. The transactions are expected to be finalized in the first quarter of 2025, subject to certain closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Vantage Data Centers is a leading global provider of hyperscale data centers. The company is expanding its Québec City Data Center Campus (QC2) with construction of a third facility currently underway by Pomerleau Inc. Once fully developed, the campus will total 925,000 square feet (86,000 square metres) and generate 86MW of combined IT capacity; the new facility will add 16MW of IT capacity. The expansion is intended to meet rising demand for cloud services across Québec and Eastern Canada and to serve Vantage's global top-tier customers. CDPQ committed USD 75 million (CAD 103 million) as part of senior financing to support the project, and the broader USD 130 million (CAD 179 million) credit facility was structured and underwritten by Societe Generale. The new facility is expected to be completed in Spring 2025.

  • Equinox Fitness

    Led · Equity · Mar 2024

    Equinox Group operates a portfolio of lifestyle brands including Equinox, Equinox Hotels, SoulCycle, Blink Fitness and E by Equinox, focused on high-performance luxury living. The company currently operates 107 clubs globally and reports a pipeline of more than 25 new locations across major markets. Revenue increased 27% in 2023 and member engagement reached the highest level on record. Equinox is positioning to accelerate growth through new club openings, scaling its luxury experience, and launching new innovative offerings. To support those plans and to refinance maturing loans, the company secured significant new capital and a new credit facility. Its stated mission is to grow disruptive lifestyle brands at the convergence of fitness, experiences, and community. Equinox is a NYC-based high-performance lifestyle brand operating upscale, full-service fitness clubs and an integrated suite of programs, services and products. Its offerings include strength and cardio training, studio classes, personal training, spa services, apparel and food/juice bars. The company operates 89 clubs across U.S. cities including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Houston and Washington, DC, as well as international locations in London, Toronto and Vancouver. Led by Executive Chairman and Managing Partner Harvey Spevak, Equinox received a minority investment from L Catterton. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The company said it will use the funds to continue its expansion in the U.S. and internationally.

  • Qualtrics

    Led · Equity · Jun 2023

    Qualtrics is the leader and pioneer of the experience management (XM) software category. Its core product is an enterprise experience-management (XM) software platform. Management says it will use partnership capital to build the next great enterprise cloud platform and pursue category-defining growth, including investment in areas such as AI. The company was subject to a previously announced $12.5 billion acquisition that closed concurrent with the co-investment. BDT & MSD Partners' affiliated funds and DFO Management (the family investment office of Michael Dell) each invested $250 million for a combined $500 million co-investment alongside Silver Lake and CPP Investments, with certain family enterprises from the BDT & MSD network also participating. Gregg Lemkau of BDT & MSD Partners will join Qualtrics' board as part of the transaction. Qualtrics builds an experience-management (XM) platform and began as an online market-research service. The company launched its XM Platform to help organizations manage internal feedback, uncover business drivers, predict customer needs, and retain employees. Qualtrics bootstrapped for a decade before taking venture financing in 2012 and has since scaled rapidly. It reports being profitable and cash-flow positive while growing revenue from roughly $150 million to somewhere north of $250 million this year. Leadership hires and board additions (including a new COO and an Atlassian CFO on the board) indicate preparation for a possible future IPO, with the founder stating a goal of reaching billion-dollar revenue before going public. Qualtrics provides a software-as-a-service platform that captures customer, market, and employee insights to help clients make data-driven decisions. The platform is used by 6,000 global enterprises, academic institutions, and government agencies to collect, analyze, and act on feedback across customer satisfaction, employee engagement, brand, market, and product topics. Led by CEO Ryan Smith, the company plans to use new funding for continued product innovation and international expansion. The company closed a $150M Series B that valued Qualtrics at over $1 billion. With this round, Qualtrics has raised $220M in total funding to date. The business emphasizes voice-of-the-customer, employee engagement, and market insight capabilities for organizations worldwide. Qualtrics builds online data-collection and analysis software primarily used for market research and customer/employee insights. Its product lineup expanded from a core Research Suite to include Qualtrics 360 (employee assessment) and Site Intercept (targeted website content). The company claims more than 4,000 enterprise customers and 600 universities and operates from a 200-person workforce. Qualtrics says it has been profitable since its founding in 2002. Management plans to invest heavily in growth and add about 250 employees over the next year, based at its headquarters in Provo, Utah. The company positions itself as enabling sophisticated research without outside firms or complex IT installations.

Team

  • Glenn Hutchins

    Co-Founder

  • Jim Davidson

    Co-Founder & Co-Chief Executive Officer

    LinkedIn
  • David Roux

    Co-Founder & Senior Director

    LinkedIn
  • Barrett Karr

    Manager, Government Relations

    LinkedIn