Executive summary
Key trends:
- Mega-funds dominate. The top 10 funds accounted for over 80% of all capital raised in H1 2025, reflecting investors’ preference for large, proven managers.
- Fundraising shows signs of recovery. Infrastructure fundraising rose YoY, showing renewed investor confidence despite market headwinds.
- Sector and geographic diversification accelerate. Diversified and multi-sector strategies attracted the bulk of commitments, with a sharp rise in global mandates.
Introduction
Capital influx
The infrastructure and energy fundraising environment is showing signs of recovery as a total $121.3 billion was raised by closed-ended funds globally in H1 2025.
Total capital raised in the first half of the year was slightly above the capital raised in the whole of 2024, marking the first positive result since the record volumes registered in 2022.
H1 2025’s infrastructure fundraising activity significantly outperformed that of H2 2024 by raising 2.5 times the capital. H1 2025 also saw stronger results year on year, beating H1 2024 by nearly $50 billion in total capital raised in the period.
However, the downward trajectory registered in Q1 on fund launches strongly continued into the second quarter of the year as only 73 funds launched in the first half of 2025, marking the lowest level on record since 2015.
A total of $60.5 billion in capital is being sought by infrastructure funds in raising mode. While this marks a slight recovery compared with the $54 billion being sought in H2 2024, it is still the lowest level on record since 2016.
This is testament to a continued subdued fundraising environment as well as to a capital concentration trend that has been a hallmark of the infrastructure sector for nearly a decade. Quarter on quarter, capital raising activity saw a slowdown as 19 funds collected a total $34.5 billion in Q2, just over half of the $61.6 billion raised in Q1 by 34 funds.
A real recovery?
While the market is certainly upbeat in light of the first positive fundraising results for the sector in nearly three years, caution still prevails amongst industry observers as the second half of the year will be crucial to determine whether the industry is back to 2022 performance levels.
It is worth noting that, due to a prolonged challenging fundraising environment, funds have been taking longer to reach final close. Funds that reached final close in the first half of the year took an average of 27 months, the longest ever after the average 29 months result of H1 2024.
This trend has contributed to a domino effect whereby some of the funds scheduled for a 2024 final close ended up contributing to the positive result of H1 2025 instead.
From a macroeconomic perspective, high interest rates and inflation have been amongst the reasons for increased cost of capital and challenging capital raising environment. While some downward movement has been witnessed on the interest rates front, inflation rising both in Europe, albeit slightly, and in the UK, more significantly, has brought back a degree of uncertainty around whether central banks will continue to support interest rate cuts in the near future.
Largest-ever average fund size
Three funds contributed to a total of $61.4 billion capital, more than half of the total raised in the period. Namely, GIP V closed at $25.2 billion at the end of June, followed in size by EQT Infrastructure VI at $23.2 billion and Copenhagen Infrastructure V at $13 billion earlier this year.
As a result, fundraising concentration came in at the second-highest level since 2020 as the top 10 funds by size contributed to 70.6% of the total.
The average fund size skyrocketed to nearly $2.5 billion in the first half of 2025, 1.5 times higher than both H1 and H2 2024 and higher than ever since 2015.
This trend is likely to continue well into 2025 and 2026 as other large funds including KKR Global Infrastructure Investors V ($20 billion); Brookfield Global Transition Fund II ($17 billion); ISQ Global Infrastructure Fund IV ($15 billion); Stonepeak Infrastructure Fund V ($15 billion); InfraVia European Fund VI ($5 billion) remain in the market.
Diversification trend continues
Mandate diversification has continued to characterize infrastructure capital raising, highlighting a market environment where managers favor safety and protection for their investors.
Funds launched with a mandate to deploy capital globally raised $67 billion in H1 2025 – 55.3% of the total – and four times more than in H1 2024. Interestingly, capital raised to be deployed in North America jumped by nearly 10 times in H1 2025 compared with H1 2024, while Europe-only focused funds collected $11.7 billion in the period versus $17.3 billion in H1 2024.
Similarly, funds offering a diversified strategy from a sector standpoint contributed to $111.5 billion – or 92% – of the total in H1 2025, the largest ever share since 2020.
As the infrastructure fundraising environment remains volatile, market sources have indicated a move to diversification that seems reflected in H1’s data.
