Finance

The biggest private-equity firm in tech just went all-in on one huge bet

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Michael Dell, chief executive of Dell Inc, delivers his keynote speech at the All Things Oracle OpenWorld Summit in San Francisco, California September 25, 2013. REUTERS/Jana Asenbrennerova/Files
Michael Dell, the CEO Dell Inc., delivers his keynote speech at the All Things Oracle OpenWorld Summit in San Francisco.  Thomson Reuters

Private-equity firm Silver Lake is joining Michael Dell, Singapore investment fund Temasek, and Dell's family investing office in the $67 billion buyout of EMC Corp.

The tech-focused LBO shop has turned in impressive returns since its founding about 16 years ago, in part fueled by success on transactions like Skype, Virtu Financial, and Alibaba Group.

Silver Lake is putting $1 billion into the new deal, according to Bloomberg. It had already put $1 billion in to the take private of Dell back in 2013.

That initial investment delivered a 90% paper gain by November last year, according to reports at the time.

As Dan Primack at Fortune points out, that would put the total amount of equity Silver Lake has in Dell-EMC at close to $3 billion.

To put that into perspective, it is equivalent to nearly 30% of the $10 billion the firm raised to support the initial Dell deal in 2013. If that were all from a single fund — that would be unheard of.

Silver Lake declined to comment.

The Dell-EMC merger isn't just a historic tech deal. It also reflects an ongoing shift between Michael Dell and Silver Lake — the private-equity firm his seed capital helped establish at the end of the last century.

Taking Dell private at $25 billion two years ago represented the biggest deal in Silver Lake's history.

Now, its involvement in the melding together of two technology industry titans means the private-equity firm is doubling down on its massive bet.

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Jon joined Business Insider in 2015 as senior finance writer. Before BI, Jon worked at TheStreet.com, writing columns and reporting in video. He worked as a senior editor at TheDeal.com, a subsidiary. Before that, he ran Thomson Reuters' peHUB.com, a daily newsletter and online private-equity and venture-capital publication. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, M&A Journal, mergermarket, and The Washington Examiner.