Addition Research
Investment Thesis
Addition is a New York-based investment firm founded in 2020 by Lee Fixel, who spent 13 years at Tiger Global Management leading its private equity division before striking out on his own. Addition backs founders with a proven track record who are building large, defensible, technology-enabled businesses. Fixel has described the motivation for founding Addition as a reaction to the slow, multi-partner consensus process at Tiger Global — Addition is built around fast, decisive, founder-friendly capital deployed by a single senior decision-maker.
Sector Focus
Addition is a generalist growth investor with recurring concentration in a handful of areas: fintech and payments infrastructure (Stripe, Airwallex, dLocal, Base Power, Satispay), developer tools, AI infrastructure and enterprise software (Hugging Face, Snorkel AI, Render, Snyk), security and compliance (Snyk, Chainalysis), healthcare (Lyra Health), climate and energy (Zap Energy, Base Power), and consumer / e-commerce (Warby Parker, Allbirds). The firm has leaned further into AI infrastructure and applied-AI investing over the past two years.
Stage Focus
Addition invests across the early-to-growth continuum. Roughly one-third of each fund's capital is allocated to early-stage checks, with the remaining two-thirds directed at growth-stage rounds in companies that already have meaningful scale and revenue.
Check Size
- Early-stage: roughly $5M–$20M
- Growth-stage: roughly $30M–$200M+
- Average deal size across the portfolio is reported around $50M, and Addition has shown willingness to write much larger checks into later, high-conviction growth rounds (e.g., its Airwallex position).
Lead Tendency
Addition frequently leads or co-leads the rounds it participates in, particularly at growth stage, consistent with its concentrated, high-conviction portfolio construction and its history of leading Series B and later rounds for portfolio companies like Chronosphere and Airwallex.
Recent Activity
Addition has raised five consecutive funds since 2020, each in the $1.3B–$1.5B range, for total committed capital of roughly $7B, with reported AUM around $6.5B–$7B. The firm has been actively deploying capital into AI infrastructure and fintech in 2025–2026:
- Led a new financing round in Airwallex at a roughly $12B valuation (Axios, May 28, 2026), doubling down after previously leading Airwallex's $330M Series G at an $8B valuation in December 2025.
- Portfolio company Chronosphere, an observability platform Addition backed since its 2021 Series B, was acquired by Palo Alto Networks for $3.35B (announced November 19, 2025) — one of Addition's most significant recent exits.
- Continues to back AI infrastructure names including Snorkel AI (~$1.3B valuation) and Render (~$1.5B valuation), as well as fintech infrastructure like Base Power (~$4B valuation) and Italian mobile-payments company Satispay (~$1.05B valuation).
Portfolio Highlights
Addition's portfolio includes multiple companies that have gone public or achieved large outcomes: Stripe, Warby Parker (public), Freshworks (public), Delhivery (public, India), dLocal (public), Allbirds (public), Chainalysis, Hugging Face, Snyk, Navan, Lyra Health, Applied Intuition, and Chronosphere (acquired by Palo Alto Networks, 2025). The firm has recorded roughly seven portfolio exits, five of them in the past two years, reflecting a maturing, high-quality book built during the 2020–2023 fundraising run.
Team
- Lee Fixel — Founder & Managing Partner. Spent 13 years at Tiger Global Management leading the private equity/growth investing division, with prior investments including Facebook, Spotify, and Uber. Sole senior decision-maker at Addition, which lets the firm move faster than typical multi-partner VC firms.
- Andrew Miskiewicz — Partner. Part of the core investing team supporting Fixel's sourcing and diligence process.
- The firm operates with a lean, hierarchical team of roughly 40-45 people in total (including operations, finance, and investor relations functions), which is unusually large for a single-decision-maker investment shop and reflects the scale of capital under management.
Decision Process
Centralized. Lee Fixel is the sole partner with final investment authority, in explicit contrast to the multi-partner consensus model he experienced at Tiger Global. This is core to Addition's positioning to founders: fast, decisive commitments without committee review.
Founder Preferences
Addition looks for founders with a proven track record — frequently repeat or well-networked founders — building companies with large market opportunities, defensible and disruptive business models, clear paths to profitability, and scalable unit economics. The firm's growth-stage weighting means it typically backs companies with existing product-market fit and real revenue rather than pure pre-product bets.
Geographic Focus
Headquartered in New York (Park Avenue Tower), with a global investing mandate spanning North America, Europe, and Asia (e.g., Delhivery in India, Satispay in Italy, dLocal in Latin America/emerging markets, Airwallex based across Asia-Pacific/Australia).