AGM Alts Weekly | 10.5.25: Private markets market structure hanging in the balance of balance sheets?

AGM Alts Weekly #123: Making private markets more public, every week.

👋 Hi, I’m Michael.

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Good afternoon from London. I’m in Europe this week for meetings and podcasts before heading to Amsterdam to present and moderate at a private bank’s Private Markets Day.

Lost in the shuffle this week amidst big news, which included some sizable private equity buyout deals and instructive commentary by a number of private markets industry leaders at Bloomberg’s Women, Money, & Power Summit in London, was a newsworthy development that flew under the radar.

$184B AUM scaled specialist software investor Thoma Bravo announced a strategic minority investment in SDC Capital Partners, a $7.8B AUM digital infrastructure investment firm.

It’s not terribly surprising for a larger alternative asset manager to expand the reach of its platform through either partnership or acquisition. Continuing expansion is becoming an increasingly common trend for asset managers in an industry that is undergoing both evolution and consolidation as funds become firms.

What was interesting? A detail mentioned in the fine print of the announcement: Thoma Bravo “will fund the transaction from its balance sheet.”

Hanging in the balance

The balance sheets of a number of the industry’s largest alternative asset managers are growing to a meaningful size and scale.

The publicly traded alternative asset managers have sizable balance sheets.

Even scaled privately held firms are likely sitting on large sums of cash. At $184B of AUM, Thoma Bravo very likely generates at least a few billion dollars in revenues on management fees alone. At a 50% EBITDA margin, the firm would likely have a balance sheet that stands at billions of dollars. That quantum of capital would certainly give them the firepower to pursue activities like strategic equity investments in a firm like SDC and / or make sizable GP commitments to their funds or new fund launches.

Many of the industry’s largest alternative asset managers have often made meaningful investments into their funds off their balance sheets — either financed through revenue and earnings performance. Some firms, like Apollo, have chosen to transform into a more “asset-heavy” business model by buying both an insurer (Athene) and buying or owning origination platforms.

Whether asset management firms decide employ an asset-heavy (Apollo) or asset / capital-light (Blackstone) model, the industry’s largest asset managers are investing meaningful amounts of their balance sheet’s capital into their funds.

Case in point? Blackstone’s $20.468B in cash and cash equivalents as of June 2025, according to its Q2 2025 Earnings Presentation.

Included in Blackstone’s $20.468B in cash and net investments is $3.289B in GP / Fund investments, which presumably are (at least, in part) commitments from the firm’s balance sheet to Blackstone funds. According to Blackstone’s Q4 2024 Earnings Presentation, “GP/Fund Investments include Blackstone investments in Real Estate, Private Equity, Credit & Insurance, and Multi-Asset Investing, which were $578M, $1.4B, $976M, and $112M, respectively, as of December 31, 2024.”

Other publicly traded firms that have meaningful scale — but are smaller than Blackstone — also have both sizable balance sheets and significant investments into their own funds (note: firms that own insurers, such as Apollo (Athene) and KKR (Global Atlantic) have much larger shares of their balance sheet devoted to investing activities due to their model).

TPG’s Q2 2025 Earnings Presentation highlights that, as of Q2 2025, the firm has $7.9B in “investments,” which constitutes as investments in the firm’s own funds, as the below chart notes.

And it’s not just the $200B+ AUM alternative asset managers that make meaningful commitments off of their balance sheets into their own funds or strategic investments into companies that help to build the private markets ecosystem.

Tikehau’s activities with its own balance sheet capital is one such example.

A €51B AUM firm, Tikehau has over €4B of its balance sheet invested in a combination of its own strategies and other funds or co-investments.

Though the lion’s share of Tikehau’s balance sheet investment activity (70%) is allocated to its own funds, around 30% of its balance sheet investments are into or alongside other funds to provide them with additional dealflow, strategically provide them with an edge, or help to build out the private markets ecosystem.

A GP investing in their own funds is table stakes in private markets where “skin in the game” is a signal.

LPs often look to see how much GPs commit of their own capital to their funds. The larger the commitment, the more alignment with LPs.

A bigger balance sheet affords GPs with yet another strategic advantage in the era of evergreen funds: the ability to seed evergreen fund strategies with balance sheet capital.

A firm’s balance sheet can now be a tool to help GPs grow their business, particularly as it relates to evergreen funds. And, as the gap widens between the firms that have the scale, infrastructure, and distribution to build and manage evergreen fund strategies, the war chest that is an asset manager’s balance sheet will matter even more for firms looking to launch new evergreen funds with the wealth channel.

The balance sheet can serve a few different and important strategic functions for growing firms in a growth industry.

Fund the funds

For firms both large and small, the balance sheet can serve as a way to commit to funds.

The largest alternative asset managers have balance sheets that afford them with the ability to commit to their funds and seed new evergreen strategies.

Large balance sheets can now serve as a strategic advantage for firms that are looking to build out evergreen fund strategies. The firm’s capital can seed a new evergreen fund that is then distributed more widely.

Perhaps this is one explanation as to why the GP stakes industry is growing. Firms that lack the size, scale, and balance sheet expanse of the publicly traded firms can still tap into capital to grow their firm, make larger GP commitments to growing fund sizes, or commit seed capital to an evergreen fund launch.

A chart from a 2024 presentation by Petershill, Goldman’s GP stakes investment arm, illustrates why alternative asset managers choose to partner with them to help finance their growth.

Chief amongst the reasons why alternative asset managers are willing to part with equity in their growing business is to “fund a growing GP commitment” and for “initial seed capital” and for “new products and platform expansion.”

As fund sizes grow larger, so too does the need for growing capital to commit to their funds.

A chart from an October 2025 presentation from Apollo highlights the trend of fund sizes growing bigger, which is even more pronounced in certain strategies where scale is often a feature and differentiator.

Two charts from Apollo’s October 2025 Outlook on Private Markets illustrate that larger fund sizes have increasingly taken up the lion’s share of fundraising activity in recent years.

The below chart highlights that $1-5B and $5B+ funds have represented around at least ~85% of the private credit fundraising activity in the past two years.

Secondaries, another asset class where scale matters, exhibited a similar phenomenon to private credit. $5B+ funds represented almost 80% of the fundraising volume in 2025.

Managers investing in managers

There have been historical cases where alternative asset managers have invested into other alternative asset managers out of their fund for financially motivated reasons.

TPG and TA Associates’ investment in Cliffwater is one such example. TA invested in Cliffwater in 2023 to help accelerate the growth of one of the industry’s top providers of private markets products to the wealth channel. In April 2025, TPG invested out of TPG Growth, its growth equity platform, to continue to finance Cliffwater’s scaling ambitions.

TPG’s investment into Cliffwater came out of one of the firm’s funds, not its balance sheet.

Thoma Bravo’s recent investment into SDC was made out of the firm’s balance sheet — and was likely made for strategic reasons.

SDC has been an investor in digital infrastructure since 2017, providing capital solutions to develop “large-scale data center capacity for hyperscalers … next-generation data center, fiber, wireless, and cloud-services infrastructure,” according to the press release about the investment.

In the press release, Thoma Bravo noted that they are “one of the largest and most strategic customers of the world’s leading hyperscalers.”

Like many of its scaled specialist peers, Thoma Bravo has ventured beyond its roots in private equity to private credit, launching its credit platform in 2017. But despite its impressive organic growth, it has not scaled beyond various strategies in private equity and private credit. An investment in a digital infrastructure manager like SDC could be a good way for the firm to “try before they buy” and acquire an infrastructure investment capability.

Tikehau is another firm that has leveraged strategic investment in other alternative asset managers to build out its dealflow and intelligence capabilities as well as help to build the broader private markets ecosystem.

As the chart below from the firm’s 2025 Investor Presentation illustrates, the firm has made GP stakes investments via its balance sheet in a handful of managers, including fintech specialist Augmentum, Ring Capital, and Epopee.

Tikehau also invested in iCapital and incubated Opale Capital, a subsidiary of Tikehau focused on distribution of private markets funds to the wealth channel in France, as part of its strategic imperative to work with the wealth channel as part of the growing trend of the private wealth channel’s adoption of private markets.

Another example of funds investing in funds has an even more direct overlap with the wealth channel.

According to an article from Citywire and the Ares Capital Corp. BDC website, Ares’ BDC is an investor in Constellation Wealth Capital, the $1B AUM alternative asset manager focused on making minority investments into independent RIAs, which includes Cresset, AlTi Global, Lido Advisors, AlphaCore, Merit Financial, Requisite, and more.

While Ares has long been a provider of capital to many large and growing independent wealth management platforms in both the US and the UK via its BDCs and private credit funds as a direct lender, Ares’ investment in Constellation became an interesting precursor investment to another transaction that happened this week: Ares acquired a minority equity stake in $40B AUM RIA EP Wealth Advisors out of its private equity fund.

Other private equity firms have invested in or incubated independent wealth management platforms — such as General Atlantic and TPG investing in Creative Planning, Charlesbank backing Joe Duran’s RIA minority staking firm Rise Growth, Sixth Street investing in RIA minority staking firm Merchant — so this phenomenon is not a new development for two industries that are increasingly becoming inextricably linked.

But investments in the likes of iCapital, Constellation, and directly into RIAs or RIA minority staking firms are certainly interesting developments as alternative asset managers think about how they can make strategic moves to position themselves to own or manufacture distribution into their funds in the most advantageous way possible.

Speaking of making strategic moves at the intersection of private markets and private wealth, it’s difficult to decouple the technology market structure evolution in private markets from the distribution evolution occurring with the focus on private wealth. Developing both the private markets technology and the wealth management ecosystems go hand in hand to continue to build the market structure that makes it viable for the wealth channel to adopt private markets in a bigger way.

Strategic moves by alternative asset managers investing in both the technology that is enabling easier and more efficient ability to distribute private markets products to the wealth channel and investing in distribution platforms and wealth management firms themselves signals that alternative asset managers are actively trying to build and shape the private markets market structure.

By making strategic investments other funds, as Thoma Bravo did with SDC, alternative asset managers are tiling the odds in their favor on origination. They can invest in or own the origination from funds for dealflow. It also enables them to expand their platform to include other strategies, which both grows the reach of their platform and offers the opportunity for additional AUM growth.

Alternative asset managers can do the same with distribution by investing in LPs, like RIAs, or investment platforms, like iCapital, so they can make it easier to manufacture distribution into their funds.

There are lessons that alternative asset managers can look to as examples from prior market structure evolutions across equities, fixed income, and derivatives.

The next question?

The Principal Strategic Investments group of private markets?

Which alternative asset manager will create the Principal Strategic Investments group of private markets?

There are similarities to what the strategic investment groups at banks did to shape market structure in other asset classes.

Goldman’s Principal Strategic Investments group, along with other bank strategic investment arms and banks’ balance sheets, invested in and helped develop a number of companies that have been core to defining market structure and trading workflows, including Intercontinental Exchange, Tradeweb, Markit, Symphony, and more.

This concept is not entirely new to private markets. Blackstone has created a strategic investment arm, Blackstone Innovations Investments, to invest in the technology that’s powering private markets, whose portfolio includes the likes of iCapital, 73 Strings, Canoe, LemonEdge, CardoAI, and others. And many banks and alternative asset managers have invested in technology that is helping to power private markets, namely iCapital, which counts many of the asset managers and banks as investors in its business.

But there have been very few alternative asset managers (to my knowledge) that have harmonized their strategic investment activity into a single balance sheet investment and strategy team across technology (investing into technology platforms like iCapital), origination (investing into or acquiring alternative asset managers that add capabilities to their platform like Thoma Bravo did with SDC), and distribution (investing into wealth management firms or funds staking wealth management firms like Constellation).

As early as 1999, Goldman Sachs was one of the few banks that had a dedicated balance sheet strategic investments arm (Principal Strategic Investments, which it became known as in 2007) rather than relegating its strategic investments to different business units that might also be buyers or users of a company’s product. This structure of its strategic investments arm provided the firm with advantages in both the ability to have a dedicated team focused exclusively on mapping out what the future of market structure might look like and how Goldman could play a role at the epicenter of developing that market structure.

In private markets, the market structure cannot be defined without looking at technology, origination, and distribution as inextricably interconnected.

The future of private markets market structure could very well be hanging in the balance … of the balance sheets of the industry’s largest asset managers.

(Note: this chart comes from Goldman Sachs’ 2020 Investor Day Presentation)

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AGM Index

AGM has created an Index to track the leading publicly traded alternative asset managers.

Some of the industry’s largest alternative asset managers are publicly traded — and their net inflows can serve as a window into how private markets are being perceived by investors and allocators who are allocating capital into alternative investments.

Note: AUM figures are based on fee-paying AUM where applicable.

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Chart of the Week

Brought to you by:

Who put equity in my (private) credit?

Think private credit is only debt? Think again.

Most assets (58%) in distressed debt funds are equity. Equity instruments also made up nearly 45% of the assets in mezzanine and generalist private credit funds.

For investors, the takeaway is clear: Equity exposure is a significant driver of private credit performance.

Want more insight into how private credit investors manage their portfolio?

Keep up with our Charting Private Assets series.

Disclaimer

(c) 2025 MSCI Inc. All rights reserved. Any use of this chart, data or any information contained in this section are also subject to the disclaimer located at: https://www.msci.com/legal/notice-and-disclaimer, which may be updated by MSCI Inc. from time to time.

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AGM News of the Week

Articles we are reading

Infrastructure requires a lot of capital … and infrastructure funds are raising large sums of capital

📝 Brookfield Predicts AI Growth Needs $7 Trillion of Capital | Silas Brown, Heather Harris and Francesca Veronesi, Bloomberg

💡Bloomberg’s Silas Brown, Heather Harris, and Francesca Veronesi report on Brookfield Asset Management CFO Hadley Peer Marshall’s insights and assertions from a recent interview on Bloomberg TV. Peer Marshall said that there’s around $7T of investment required to finance the growth of artificial intelligence. In response to investments required across multiple sectors, Brookfield is harmonizing functions and investment capabilities across infrastructure, renewables, and real estate into a single AI strategy to “produce holistic solutions because a lot of these are going to be large industrial investments that we need to make,” Peer Marshall noted. Brookfield has committed meaningful capital to finance the buildout of AI infrastructure. Brookfield previously committed to invest €20B ($23.5B) to develop data centers and AI infrastructure in France over the next five years. The firm also announced plans to invest up to 95B kronor ($10.1B) to develop artificial intelligence infrastructure in Sweden that will take 10 to 15 years to build. Brookfield is far from the only large asset manager that’s raising large funds to finance infrastructure at scale. Ares told investors in a presentation last week that it aims to raise over $8B to invest in data centers across London, Japan, and Brazil.

📝 Brookfield Raises $4 Billion for Infrastructure Debt Fund | Ellen Schneider and Kat Hidalgo, Bloomberg

💡Bloomberg’s Ellen Schneider and Kat Hidalgo report that Brookfield Asset Management has raised over $4B in an initial close for its fourth infrastructure debt fund. Brookfield has been seeking to raise at least $7B for this fund, which will invest in junior and senior infrastructure debt, focusing on infrastructure assets and businesses backed by contracted or concession-based cash flows. The $7B target is larger than its prior funds in the space. Brookfield’s latest fund in infrastructure debt represents a broader trend — infrastructure debt becoming a popular way for private credit firms and alternative asset managers to help find solutions that insurance clients are interested in.

📝 BlackRock’s GIP nears $38bn takeover of utility AES | Oliver Barnes, Antoine Gara and James Fontanella-Khan, Financial Times

💡Financial Times’ Oliver Barnes, Antoine Gara, and James Fontanalla-Khan report that BlackRock-owned Global Infrastructure Partners is closing in on a $38B deal to buy utility group AES. This deal would represent one of the largest infrastructure buyouts in history. GIP, which also owns stakes in London’s Gatwick Airport and large pipeline networks in the US and Middle East, is in the final stages of taking over AES. AES is one of the largest publicly traded utilities in the US, owning and operating power plants across the country and in 13 other countries. AES has made significant investments in recent years in renewable energy grids, which are connected to the demand in power that’s required to support data centers.

💸 AGM’s 2/20: Infrastructure is top of mind for both asset managers and allocators. The capital required to finance the buildout of AI and digital infrastructure is massive, resulting in an opportunity for deployment by asset managers to finance this trend.

A chart from Brookfield Asset Management’s 2025 Investor Day presentation highlights the scale that Peer Marshall referenced in her interview on Bloomberg.

This chart from Brookfield also helps to illustrate how AI and data centers are inextricably linked to other categories of infrastructure, such as power and renewable energy, which need both equity and credit to finance infrastructure buildout and capex spend. This could perhaps explain why Peer Marshall noted that Brookfield is looking to create a unified AI strategy across infrastructure, real estate, and renewables.

Another notable trend is the amount of capital and scale that’s required to finance many of these investments. Scale matters in private markets, perhaps nowhere more than in infrastructure. That works to the benefit of a large firm, such as GIP, which is able to buy a company like AES, which, between equity and debt, has a reported enterprise value of over $38B. Similarly, it’s why a firm like Blue Owl might partner with Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), which will anchor a new permanent capital platform in its Digital Infrastructure strategy with a contribution from QIA that is “expected to help launch a digital infrastructure platform with more than $3 billion of initial data center assets and is expected to grow over time,” according to a Blue Owl press release about the partnership.

Larger fund sizes are a feature of today’s private markets, as the below chart from Blue Owl’s 2025 Midyear Outlook illustrates.

With the amount of capital required to finance megatrends like AI, digitalization, and power, it doesn’t look like this trend will fade away anytime soon.

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Who is hiring?

In order for alts to continue to go mainstream, we need the best talent to go into the space. Here are some openings at private markets firms. If you’d like to connect with any of these teams, let me know, and I’m happy to facilitate an introduction if appropriate. If you’re a company or fund in private markets, feel free to reach out to share a job description you’d like to be listed here to highlight for the Alt Goes Mainstream community.

🔍 Blackstone (Alternative asset manager) - Private Wealth Solutions - Content Marketing, Vice President - Tokyo. Click here to learn more.

🔍 KKR (Alternative asset manager) - Head of AI Product Management. Click here to learn more.

🔍 Apollo Global Management (Alternative asset manager) - Managing Director, Head of Investment Grade Research. Click here to learn more.

🔍 Ares (Alternative asset manager) - Vice President, Product Management & Client Services, Wealth Management Solutions, APAC. Click here to learn more.

🔍 Blue Owl (Alternative asset manager) - Market Leader, Private Wealth, Senior Associate. Click here to learn more.

🔍 Franklin Templeton (Asset manager) - Head of Marketing - France, Benelux, and the Nordics. Click here to learn more.

🔍 iCapital (Private markets infrastructure investment platform) - RIA, Family Office Business Development - Vice President. Click here to learn more.

🔍 Goldman Sachs Alternatives (Alternative asset manager) - Asset and Wealth Management, Client Solutions Group, Retail Alternatives Specialist, New York - Vice President. Click here to learn more.

🔍 Partners Group (Alternative asset manager) - Investment Leader, Private Equity, Services vertical. Click here to learn more.

🔍 Ultimus Fund Solutions (Fund administrator) - SVP, Business Development. Click here to learn more.

🔍 Cerity Partners (Wealth management platform) - Head of Talent, Principal. Click here to learn more.

🔍 JPMorgan Chase (Asset manager) - Asset Management - Private Equity Associate - Program Associate. Click here to learn more.

🔍 Allocate (Private markets infrastructure investment platform) - Managing Director / Senior Director, Investments & Research. Click here to learn more.

🔍 SageSpring Wealth Partners (Wealth manager) - Team Financial Advisor. Click here to learn more.

🔍 MSCI (Data services) - Vice President, Program Management - Private Assets. Click here to learn more.

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🤝 Interested in partnering with Alt Goes Mainstream? 🤝

Alt Goes Mainstream is a community of engaged experts and executives in private markets.

Fill out this form using the link below to explore partnership opportunities.

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The latest on Alt Goes Mainstream

Recent podcast or video episodes and blog posts on Alt Goes Mainstream:

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🎥 Watch KKR Partner & Co-CEO of KKR Private Equity Conglomerate LLC (K-PEC) Alisa Wood discuss how the firm has innovated in private markets, why KKR came up with the Conglomerate structure, and how evergreens can play a role in investors’ portfolios. Watch here.

🎥 Watch Cantilever Group’s Co-Founder and Managing Partner Todd Owens in a live podcast from BTG Pactual’s NYC office share why GP stakes can be the best of all worlds. Watch here.

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🎥 Watch Venkat Subramaniam, Co-Founder of DealsPlus on building a single source of truth for private markets. Watch here.

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📝 Read about a year in the book of alts — a compilation of the 1,000+ pages written in weekly newsletters on Alt Goes Mainstream in 2024. Read here.

📝 Read about the launch of the AGM Studio, a collaboration between Alt Goes Mainstream and Broadhaven Ventures to incubate, invest in, and help scale companies and funds in private markets. Read here.

🎙 Hear Balderton Capital General Partner and former Goldman Sachs Partner Rana Yared discuss why Europe can build global companies out of the region. Listen here.

🎥 Watch Stepstone Private Wealth CEO Bob Long discuss StepStone Private Wealth’s edge and nuances with their evergreen structures in the first episode of “What’s Your Edge.” Watch here.

🎙 Hear $5B AUM Ritholtz Wealth Management’s Director of Institutional Asset Management Ben Carlson bring a wealth of common sense to asset allocation and private markets. Listen here.

🎥 Watch Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Cantilever Group and former Goldman Sachs and Broadhaven Capital Partners Partner Todd Owens discuss the middle market opportunity in GP stakes investing. Watch here.

🎙 Hear Intapp’s President, Industries, and Co-Founder of DealCloud by Intapp Ben Harrison discuss how data and automation are transforming private markets. Listen here.

🎙 Hear me discuss why and how alts are going mainstream on The Compound’s Animal Spirits podcast with Ritholtz Wealth’s Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson. Listen here.

🎙 Hear Manulife’s Global Head of Private Markets Anne Valentine Andrews share how to approach building a private markets investment platform at an industry behemoth and the merits of infrastructure investing. Listen here.

🎥 Watch Lawrence Calcano, Chairman & CEO at iCapital, on the AGM podcast discuss driving efficiency across the entire value chain to transform private markets. Watch here.

🎙 Hear VC legend New Enterprise Associates’ Chairman Emeritus and Former Managing General Partner Peter Barris discuss how he transitioned from operator to VC and transformed NEA into a venture juggernaut in the process. Listen here.

🎙 Hear Blue Owl’s Global Private Wealth President & CEO Sean Connor share insights and lessons learned from working with the wealth channel. Listen here.

🎙 Hear Ritholtz Wealth Management’s Managing Partner Michael Batnick share views on how wealth managers are navigating private markets. Listen here.

📝 Read about the evolution of GP stakes, why alternative asset management business models are better than SaaS, and our partnership with Todd Owens and David Ballard at Cantilever, a mid-market GP stakes firm anchored by BTG Pactual. Read here.

🎙 Hear how Chris Long, Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Palmer Square Capital Management has built a $29B credit investment firm and a winning NWSL soccer franchise, the KC Current. Listen here.

🎙 Hear stories from building market-defining companies Blackstone, Airbnb, and private markets from Laurence Tosi, former CFO of Blackstone and Airbnb and Managing Partner & Founder of $7.6B investment firm WestCap. Listen here.

🎙 Hear Chris Ailman, the CIO of $307B CalSTRS, discuss how he manages a portfolio with ~40% exposure to private markets. Listen here.

🎙 Hear Blackstone CTO John Stecher discuss how technology is transforming private markets. Listen here.

🎙 Hear investing legends John Burbank and Ken Wallace of Nimble Partners provide a masterclass on investing with both a macro and VC lens. Listen here.

📝 Read how 73 Strings CEO & Co-Founder Yann Magnan and team are leveraging AI to build a modern and holistic monitoring and valuation platform for private markets in The AGM Q&A. Read here.

🎙 Hear Robert Picard, Head of Alternatives at $117B AUM Hightower, discusses how they approach alternative investments. Listen here.

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My dog Nugget probably thinking about the AUM of alternative asset managers

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If you have any suggestions, would like me to feature an article, research, or would like to recommend a guest or topic for the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast, reach out! I’d love to include it in my next post or on a future podcast.

Special thanks to Ryan McCormack, Nick Owens, and Michael Rutter for their contributions to the AGM Index section of the newsletter.

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