TA Associates with $16.5bn fundraise

Simple answer honestly: 1) Specific to TA, they timed a lot of their recent exits extremely well in the bull market, which generated some pretty outrageous returns that obviously helped with marketing for this fundraising cycle, and 2) More materially to the actual question, TA's lane/strategy/approach is fundamentally different from Tiger/Insight (non-majority/buyout Insight). All three can be bucketed into the "growth" category, but the way Tiger and Insight invest is more akin to VC while TA's investments tend to be more similar to those made by later-stage buyout shops. Again, I'm intentionally overlooking Insight's buyout activity to simplify this analysis; if you think Insight's majority/buyout practice should be considered, then it's just further evidence of the point I make below (i.e. someone said on a separate thread that Insight's most recent deals have been majority/buyout).

Insight/Tiger (for last few years) have primarily been doing minority investments in high-growth tech/software companies, at prices/multiples that are a few years ahead of where the company may be at time of fundraising/investment. They're participating in Series B, C, D, etc. rounds. Smells like VC to me.

On the other hand, for the past decade TA has done almost exclusively majority/buyout deals, often utilizing leverage. The investment thesis/value-creation plan oftentimes has a large "transformation" element (i.e. add-ons) that is only possible to execute in control investments. With few exceptions, all of the companies that TA invests in will be growing somewhat quickly (think 15-30%, most of the time), though those growth rates will appear modest relative to the types of companies Tiger/Insight gravitated towards in recent years. Also, TA invests in sectors outside of tech/software so they benefit a bit from diversification.

Against the macro backdrop/dynamics from the past 12-15 months that caused the market to slow down, TA's approach is likely to have somewhat insulated them from the more acutely negative impacts that Tiger/Insight are experiencing. Part of that is driven by TA's diversification, since the multiple compression in tech/software was particularly dramatic (while Tiger/Insight's entire portfolios were exposed). Probably a slight benefit from being control investors depending on how significantly certain companies needed to adjust operationally to navigate the current environment. Mostly, though, the style of growth investing that TA adheres to - control investments in companies that are more mature than the typical Tiger/Insight company - means that their investments are significantly less reliant on/impacted by changes to the interest rate environment. Tiger/Insight's average entry multiple over the past few years was likely stratospheric relative to TA's, so unless their portfolio companies experienced unexpected and explosive growth post-investment, their assumptions around interest rate/multiple compression trajectory were too optimistic. Basically, they were forced to mark things down despite having every incentive to not do so.