Executive summary
The H1 2025 Private Equity Fundraising Report highlights an industry navigating prolonged liquidity pressures, with overall capital raised declining 23% year-on-year. Buyouts remain dominant, with $192 billion raised in the first half and more than $1 trillion secured over the past 30 months.
Secondaries also stood out, raising $55 billion, their second-strongest half since 2020, as investors turned to alternative liquidity solutions.
At the same time, regional fundraising patterns are shifting, with multi-region funds capturing a growing share of commitments.
Key trends:
- Buyouts remain the dominant. Despite overall fundraising falling 23% year-on-year, buyout funds raised $192 billion in H1.
- Liquidity constraints continue. A fourth straight year of limited investor distributions has slowed fresh commitments. As a result, secondaries are surging.
- Regional capital flows are shifting. Multi-region funds captured 44% of capital among the largest fund raises.
Introduction
Ongoing liquidity challenges continued to restrict private equity fundraising in H1 2025. The largest allocators to the asset class are on track to experience a fourth straight year of limited distributions, severely impacting their ability to put fresh capital to work and forcing many to rethink pacing.
The impact is clear: across buyout and growth funds, GPs raised $221 billion – 23% less than H1 2024, and a sign of the challenge facing many fundraising professionals.
Secondaries have taken on a central role as a key provider of liquidity and the sector had another strong half. Secondaries funds garnered $55 billion, the second strongest period since H2 2020. The sector accounted for 18.5% of total fundraising tracked in this report.
Another key development was a drop-off in fundraising by funds focused exclusively on North America. Policy uncertainty around the US tariff regime, coupled with potential slower growth and the relative attractiveness on non-US asset prices, are having an impact. Multi-region funds were the beneficiaries, becoming more appealing due to their ability to deploy assets opportunistically with increased focus on relative value.
