What's New Middle market direct lending moves with private equity, which makes it a weak defensive counterweight in an equity-heavy portfolio. James Li, President and Partner at Davidson Kempner, argues this in a podcast interview on Alt Goes Mainstream. Direct lenders finance the same companies the sponsors own, one level up the capital structure. Distressed and opportunistic credit run the other way, buying when sponsors and lenders are forced to move assets. Allocators sho

Distributing private markets products to the wealth channel demands a firmwide operational and cultural commitment that most asset managers underestimate, and firms without top-down support should stay out. Ava Mallin, Managing Director of US Private Wealth Solutions at Ardian, argues this in a conversation recorded live at iCapital Connect on Alt Goes Mainstream. Private wealth is complex and expensive, she says, requiring operational overhauls and increased distribution spe

The private credit shakeout will sort managers by funding source rather than by underwriting quality alone. Kevin McKeon, Head of the US Financial Services Practice at Odgers, makes the argument on Leading Through Uncertainty.

Private equity's core promise held for roughly three decades and then broke. Steven Kaplan of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, whose analysis of US buyout funds anchors a report on Bloomberg Television, finds outperformance against public markets running from the 1990s through 2018 and reversing from 2019. Two forces did it. Big tech pushed public market returns higher, and the prices paid during the boom made positions harder to exit. The result sits in in

Capital concentration at the top of infrastructure has become the middle market's structural advantage rather than its problem. Stuart Waugh, Managing Partner of Northleaf Capital Partners, argues this in an interview on the How I Invest Podcast.

The stress surfacing across private markets is a dispersion problem inside portfolios, and the era when weak managers posted numbers close to strong ones has closed. Tony Tutrone, Global Head of Private Markets at Neuberger Berman, argues this in an interview on CNBC.

The expansion in private credit that matters is happening above the middle market, in investment grade rated assets currently sitting in liquid public markets. John Waldron, President and COO of Goldman Sachs, makes the case on The Bridge by iCapital.

AI readiness has moved into entry diligence, and it now helps decide whether a deal proceeds at all rather than what happens after close. Rachel Barton, Global Lead for CEO Advisory and Private Equity at Accenture, argues this in an episode of Private Markets 360. Buyers are applying digital maturity and AI disruption assessments alongside standard diligence, testing data quality, technology architecture, and whether the business itself is a plausible casualty. The trigger wa

The binding constraint in private markets has moved from raising capital to originating assets, and firms that keep organizing around fundraising are solving a problem that no longer exists. Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, argues this in an interview with iCapital CEO Lawrence Calcano on The 19th Hole.

Space companies raised more in six months than in all of last year, and the money went to production capacity rather than to technical novelty. First half investment reached $11.3 billion across 244 deals, above the $10.1 billion invested across 433 deals in 2025, according to PitchBook's 2026 Vertical Snapshot: Space Tech, published August 25 under the subtitle Capital moves to the factory floor.

Datacenter construction grew 46% year on year in the second quarter, faster than any other construction type, and the private equity money chasing it arrived through 529 separate transactions rather than a handful of large ones.

The distinction between public and private markets—liquid vs. illiquid, transparent vs. opaque, accessible vs. exclusive—collapsed in 2025. Apollo's Scott Kleinman called it "irreversible." Goldman Sachs' Marc Nachmann described a "continuum" replacing the old binary. J.P. Morgan declared private markets "essential infrastructure." Infrastructure to trade private assets like public securities is now being built. Retail investors are gaining access to asset classes once reserv

ING built Europe's largest evergreen alternatives platform by treating private markets as "slow money" requiring human-centric design.

In a recent Alt Goes Mainstream The DNA podcast interview, Ken Wong—Partner and Head of Asia Pacific Infrastructure at EQT—makes the case that applying private equity operational playbooks to infrastructure assets in developed Asia generates equity-like returns in a market that remains dramatically underpenetrated relative to Western counterparts.

What's New According to iCapital Chairman and CEO Lawrence Calcano in a recent episode of the Alts Pulse podcast , Asia has emerged as the firm's largest international market with $18 billion in assets under management, surpassing Europe ($12B), Canada ($7B+), and Latin America ($5B). The platform has opened new offices in Tokyo and Australia within the past year, signaling aggressive expansion as wealth channels worldwide accelerate adoption of alternative investments. Why I

According to Goldman Sachs Asset Management's 2025 Alternatives Summit, corporate M&A volumes in 2025 are expected to match 2021 levels, with IPO markets showing significant recovery despite earlier tariff impacts. The October gathering brought together leaders including former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who delivered a stark warning that the next decade will be "the most dangerous and transformational of our lifetime."

As U.S. federal and state debt levels climb and institutional investors seek inflation-protected, long-duration assets, infrastructure has emerged as one of private markets' fastest-growing categories—yet the massive opportunity to privatize government-owned assets remains largely untapped.

Private equity value creation is experiencing its most significant transformation in decades as artificial intelligence shifts from efficiency tool to fundamental business reinvention. Chris Kindt, Partner and Head of Value Creation at Hg, warns that companies failing to embrace "AI-first" culture risk falling on the wrong side of disruption as agentic AI delivers 10-20x efficiency gains in core functions.

Artificial intelligence infrastructure will require over $7 trillion in capital investment over the next decade—nearly ten times the $800 billion spent on internet fiber buildout—but grid capacity shortages rather than capital availability now threaten to constrain AI adoption, forcing a fundamental geographic inversion where training workloads move to remote power sources while inference demands urban proximity.

Asset managers acquire $1T in insurance products, transforming from episodic fundraising to permanent capital with lower valuations.