Sixth Street invests $143M in Chronograph to secure private-market data

Sixth Street invested $143 million in Chronograph, valuing the portfolio-monitoring company at $350 million, as private-capital firms seek trusted data infrastructure for AI-driven decision-making in markets where valuations and redemption fears have roiled investors.

"Private-capital firms and institutional investors need data they can trust," said Charlie Tafoya, Chronograph's co-founder and chief executive. "That was the foundation of our business 10 years ago."

Chronograph's platform automates portfolio monitoring across more than 258,000 private companies, serving clients including private-equity and venture-capital firms, pension funds and sovereign-wealth funds with $5.9 trillion in invested capital across some 15,000 funds. The company has quadrupled revenue since its last fundraising in 2022, with more than one-third of annual recurring revenue coming from outside the U.S. and Canada, Tafoya said.

The investment underscores a broader push by Wall Street to back data providers serving private markets, where assets have surged but technological infrastructure has lagged. "More capital markets activity will continue to come into the private markets in the alternatives landscape, private credit being a great example of that," said Alex Goodman, a principal in Sixth Street's growth investment unit. "The underlying technological infrastructure just hasn't kept pace."

Data Infrastructure Becomes a Private-Market Priority

Chronograph was founded in 2016 by Tafoya, a former Pantheon Ventures executive, and Michael Bridge, now the company's chief technology officer, who previously worked at private-equity firm Lee Equity Partners. The Brooklyn, New York-based company counts Summit Partners, Carlyle, Nasdaq's venture arm and Sidekick Partners as minority investors — all of whom remain on the cap table after the Sixth Street deal.

The company's technology helps automate portfolio monitoring, valuations, analysis and reporting. Clients can access their private-equity, private-credit, venture-capital, infrastructure and other portfolio data through leading AI tools including Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT and Codex. An investor can check exposure to the software industry or a specific country, or compare investment levels against target allocations to determine whether rebalancing is needed.

"Volatility as a whole has tended to be a catalyst for firms to better understand their investment positions quickly," Tafoya said, comparing the behavior to how individuals check their trading accounts more frequently during turbulent periods.

Private Credit Emerges as the Next Frontier

Private credit has become a natural extension for Chronograph, Tafoya said, noting that one of its investors first raised the idea in 2020. At the time it did not make sense, but now the firm has the scale and experience to address what he described as a market still reliant on Microsoft Excel.

"Private credit looks like private equity did, call it 10 to 15 years ago, in terms of fundamental technology," Tafoya said.

The company ran a capital-raising process this year amid the software selloff and broader market volatility, receiving interest from parties seeking a majority stake. Chronograph ultimately chose to bring in a minority investor. It opened its first international office in London and now plans to open an office in Singapore.

Sixth Street's investment in Chronograph follows a similar thesis behind its more than $1 billion investment in Kpler, a commodities- and shipping-data provider whose MarineTraffic service became a vital resource for tracking ship flows through the Strait of Hormuz. The broader trend has also drawn BlackRock, which acquired Preqin for roughly $3.2 billion to serve clients across public and private markets, and MSCI, which bought Burgiss in 2023.

"Last year, for the only time ever, we saw net commitment creation actually contract slightly," Tafoya said, adding that commitments have returned to positive territory this year. While investment sales remain challenged, investor commitment to private capital as a whole remains robust, he said.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.