Coatue loses two more partners, including one who led firm’s crypto investments: The Information

Investment manager Coatue, with over $73 billion in assets under management, has reportedly lost two more general partners in recent months.

Luca Schmid left the firm in August and Sebastian Duesterhoeft departed a month after, The Information reported on Friday, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Schmid plans to work with Checkout.com’s founder and CEO Guillaume Pousaz to start a family office to make investments in fintech startups, and Duesterhoeft is set to join Lightspeed Venture Partners as a partner, according to the report.

Notably, Schmid led some of Coatue’s top crypto and fintech investments, including Chainalysis, Fireblocks, Dune Analytics, Checkout.com, Chime and N26, according to his LinkedIn profile. Duesterhoeft, on the other hand, led the firm’s tech investments, including Airtable, Snowflake and Snyk, his LinkedIn account indicates.

Schmid and Duesterhoeft are the latest executives to depart Coatue. Last week, The Information reported that Matt Mazzeo, general partner at Coatue, left the firm to start his own investment fund focused on backing early-stage startups. Mazzeo’s deals at Coatue reportedly included NFT marketplace giant OpenSea.

Coatue was founded in 1999 by brothers Philippe and Thomas Laffont as a hedge fund. It became one of the most active tech investors during the recent boom. Earlier this year, The Block Research mapped out Coatue’s crypto investments and found out that the New York-based firm had invested in at least 14 crypto startups, including Alchemy, Bitmain, CertiK, Dapper Labs and MoonPay.

Source