Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook (FB) executive and founder of venture firm Social Capital, is quietly launching a hedge fund.
Palihapitiya declined to confirm or discuss the new effort with Coins2Day, citing regulatory restrictions. But recent SEC filings show that an umbrella organization called Social Capital PEP Management will launch in May, with plans to house both the existing venture capital funds (which has $1.27 billion in assets under management) and a new long/short public equities effort.
No target size is listed for the hedge fund business, which it seems will be led by Palihapitiya and new Social Capital partners Carl Anderson and Sakya Duvvuru. Anderson previously was a managing director and portfolio manager with Glynn Capital Management. Duvvuru spent the past three years managing the portfolio for Weaving Capital, a small long/short hedge fund that managed money for Palihapitiya and other Social Capital employees (unlike the new effort, which will manage third-party capital).
@WeavingCapital is our hedge fund for internal capital. Year 2 now concluded and for 2014 we were +21.24%. Since inception, we are +73.3%.
— Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) January 3, 2015
Most of the other tweets associated with Weaving Capital referred to publicly held technology companies, but it is unclear if the new Social Capital hedge fund will focus exclusively on tech. Perhaps Palihapitiya will share more details on May 4 at the annual Sohn Investment Conference in New York, where he is scheduled to speak.
Palihapitiya left Facebook in 2011 to launch Social Capital, whose portfolio companies have included Box (BOX), Slack, SurveyMonkey, WealthFront, and Yammer (acquired by Microsoft). He also is a co-owner of the Golden State Warriors.
