Silver Lake Partners is going big with its latest fund.

The technology-focused private equity fund wants to raise a new fund worth $16 billion.

Raising funds as market prices have been collapsing is a solid strategy. It will give the PE an enormous amount of capital to buy companies at distressed prices. With losses mounting in current portfolios, however, one must wonder if institutional investors will step up and make new investments.

Silver Lake Partner and Its New Fund

Silver Lake is the global leader in technology investing. It has over $43 billion in combined assets.

The firm has accumulated a strong track record since its first fund in 1999. Silver Lake has three funds at the moment. These include the flagship Silver Lake Partners, which makes large investments in technology and growth businesses.

It also has Silver Lake Alpine (SLA), which targets structured equity and debt investment opportunities in large-cap technology. Finally, we have Silver Lake Waterman (SLW), which offers flexible growth capital to later-stage private companies in the technology sector.

Many of their past funds have earned high returns during the life of the fund, so that should help them when appealing for new funds form their existing client base of institutions and pension funds. Silver Lake Partners IV raised in 2013 has a compound rate of return of 27.2% from the initial investment until the final cash out according to disclosure filings from CalPERS, the pension fund for California state, school, and public agency members. Silver Lake Partners III, a fund raised in 2007, delivered a compounded annual return of 18.8% according to the filings.

The firm is expected to begin raising the new fund in the second quarter of the year, which began last week.

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