* Private equity returned fewer profits to investors for a fourth straight year as the industry sat on $3.8 trillion of unsold assets and struggled to raise money for new funds.
* Distributions as a percentage of net asset value remained at 14% last year — the second-lowest level since the depths of the 2008 financial crisis.
* Fundraising tumbled 16% in 2025 to $395
billion - the fourth straight year of declines - even as investors devoted more capital to vehicles focused on infrastructure and secondaries.
It feels to me like some kind of creative destruction that's supposed to happen in the economy hasn't happened. We should have had a recession, or some kind of economic crash, and now because AI or something, we're in this like weird malaise stage where these companies keep growing, but the healthy disruption that should lead the next string of startups is stuck behind it.
Takeaways:
* Private equity returned fewer profits to investors for a fourth straight year as the industry sat on $3.8 trillion of unsold assets and struggled to raise money for new funds.
* Distributions as a percentage of net asset value remained at 14% last year — the second-lowest level since the depths of the 2008 financial crisis.
* Fundraising tumbled 16% in 2025 to $395 billion - the fourth straight year of declines - even as investors devoted more capital to vehicles focused on infrastructure and secondaries.
It feels to me like some kind of creative destruction that's supposed to happen in the economy hasn't happened. We should have had a recession, or some kind of economic crash, and now because AI or something, we're in this like weird malaise stage where these companies keep growing, but the healthy disruption that should lead the next string of startups is stuck behind it.