2025 as Secondaries’ Breakout Year

In 2025, private equity secondaries look like an established core of the private-markets toolkit. The strength of the asset class is evident in how the fundraising into secondary strategies is holding up in a weaker environment for private markets overall. Transaction volumes are at record levels. And structurally, secondaries now sit at the intersection of two pressures: limited partners seeking flexibility in older vintages, and managers looking for ways to extend ownership of selected assets without forcing traditional exits.

A record year in an otherwise weaker cycle for private capital fundraising

On the fundraising side, secondary strategies have continued to attract substantial capital. Over the last 12 months, an estimated ~$105 billion has been raised for secondaries funds, matching or exceeding prior peak years even as buyout, venture, and real estate fundraising remain below their previous highs.

Deal activity has moved in the same direction. Secondary transaction volume is estimated at roughly $165 billion through Q3 2025, including around $60 billion in Q3 alone, putting the market on track to exceed $210 billion for the full year. Total secondaries AUM is now in the region of $700 billion, or roughly 4% of all private-capital AUM, which is still a small share, but a clear step-up versus a decade ago.

The contrast is straightforward: while overall private-capital fundraising has declined meaningfully from the 2020–2021 peak, secondaries have grown in both fundraising and transaction volume.

A highly concentrated market

This growth, however, is not broad-based. It is concentrated in a small number of very large platforms. On the fundraising side, only around 40–45 secondary funds have closed in the past 12 months, versus a five-year average closer to 120–130. The top five funds account for roughly 65% of all capital raised. Vehicles larger than $5 billion represent about three-quarters of total secondaries fundraising.

Flagship examples include Ardian’s ASF IX at around $30 billion and AlpInvest’s latest programme at roughly $10 billion. More than 10 secondary funds are now sized at $10 billion or more. Industry estimates suggest total secondaries dry powder is in the region of $315 billion as of Q3 2025.

In effect, a handful of global platforms now intermediate a very large share of secondary capital. Smaller managers are left to focus on narrower segments of the market such as smaller LP portfolios, specific niches, or differentiated GP-led strategies.

Why LPs are leaning into secondaries

From an allocator’s perspective, the appeal of secondaries in this phase of the cycle is practical rather than thematic. They address several concrete issues at once.

First, they provide a portfolio clean-up mechanism. LP-led sales make it possible to sell older fund positions, reduce over-allocation to private markets, and simplify GP lists without waiting the full life of each fund. In an environment where many 2016–2021 vintages still hold significant unrealised NAV, that flexibility is valuable.

Second, they help with vintage diversification. Buying interests in more seasoned funds can smooth J-curves and improve visibility into underlying portfolio quality compared with committing only to new blind pools. That can make it easier to rebalance exposures across vintages and strategies.

Third, secondary pricing provides an additional reference point for valuation. Transaction marks offer boards, investment committees, and risk teams a market-based data point to compare against GP NAVs, particularly when exits are slow and marks have been sticky.

Finally, secondaries can be used tactically in manager relationships: some LPs sell portions of older funds, re-up into the GP’s new vehicle, and selectively participate in GP-led transactions or co-investments. That allows them to reshape exposure along the curve while maintaining strategic relationships.

In short, when traditional exit channels are slow and portfolios are ageing, secondaries are one of the few levers LPs can pull without disrupting their entire programme.

GP-led deals and continuation vehicles

On the GP-led side, continuation vehicles (CVs), strip sales, and single-asset deals have become a meaningful sub-market. Used appropriately, GP-led transactions can give liquidity to existing LPs while allowing managers and new investors to hold high-conviction assets beyond a standard fund term.

With GP-led transactions estimated at around 16% of sponsor exit volume year-to-date in 2025, governance, pricing discipline and process quality are central to whether GP-led secondaries are seen as a healthy continuation mechanism or as simple term extensions.

New patterns: multi-asset CVs, sector mix, and private-wealth capital

Recent data adds three notable nuances to the picture.

First, multi-asset continuation vehicles now represent a larger share of GP-led issuance. They account for close to half of GP-led secondary deal volume in the first half of 2025, up from roughly one-third the year before. This gives managers more flexibility to package portfolios of companies rather than negotiating single-asset deals, but it also raises questions about how value is allocated between stronger and weaker assets within a bundle.

Second, technology, including AI-adjacent businesses, has become the largest sector within GP-led transactions, representing approximately a quarter of GP-led deal value in early 2025. These are often the hardest assets to value, with wide ranges of opinion on growth, margins and exit timing. Rolling such companies into continuation vehicles at optimistic valuations can create tension between existing and new investors if performance is more volatile than expected.

Third, private-wealth capital is becoming an important source of funding for secondaries. Estimates suggest that private-wealth channels account for about 18% of near-term secondaries fundraising, via evergreen vehicles, interval and tender-offer funds, and other semi-liquid structures distributed through wealth platforms. That capital can be long-duration and relatively stable, which suits the asset class.

Is the growth of secondaries sustainable?

Structurally, the case for secondaries looks durable. The stock of primary commitments made since 2010 is very large, so even a small percentage transacting each year implies a recurring opportunity set. As more institutional and wealth-channel vehicles allocate to private markets, their need for liquidity and portfolio-management tools will likely keep supporting secondary activity. Many GPs are still only on their first continuation vehicle, suggesting further room for adoption.

For now, secondaries sit in a favourable position: there is a large inventory of older assets, strong LP demand for flexibility, and enough complexity in structuring and underwriting that genuine skill can still differentiate outcomes.

A growing role in the private-markets system

The bigger question is not whether secondaries will remain part of the landscape; it is how central they become.

With annual secondary transaction volumes now exceeding $200 billion, GP-led deals accounting for a meaningful share of sponsor exits, and several large platforms holding significant dry powder, secondaries are moving from a peripheral tool to an integral part of how private-market portfolios are managed.

At this point in the cycle, secondaries are performing a useful function: providing liquidity, price signals, and portfolio flexibility in a market where traditional exits remain constrained. The challenge over the next few years will be to preserve that role while managing concentration, governance, and product-design risks as the strategy scales.

Brand Manager

Aayushi Thakur

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why are secondaries growing when other private-market strategies are slowing?

A: Because they address specific problems: they help LPs manage over-allocation, clean up older vintages, and get liquidity without waiting for traditional exits. In a slower exit environment, those functions are in high demand.

Q: Are secondaries funds now dominated by a few large managers?

A: Yes. A small number of global platforms account for a majority of recent secondaries fundraising, especially in funds above $5 billion. Smaller managers tend to focus on niche segments or smaller transactions.

Q: What is the difference between LP-led and GP-led secondaries?

A: LP-led deals involve investors selling their fund interests to new buyers. GP-led deals are initiated by the manager and typically move one or more portfolio companies into a new vehicle, offering existing LPs a choice to sell or roll.

Q: How does private-wealth capital change the secondaries market?

A: Wealth and semi-retail channels provide an additional, potentially sticky source of capital, often via evergreen or semi-liquid products. That expands the investor base but also introduces expectations around liquidity and reporting that need careful product design.

Q: What are the main risks in the growth of GP-led secondaries?

A: Key risks include conflicts of interest in pricing, the potential to extend fund life without genuine value creation, and concentration in harder-to-value sectors such as technology. Strong governance and transparent processes are critical to managing these issues.

Sources

1. PitchBook, Q3 2025 Global Private Market Fundraising Report.
2. https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/11/secondaries-q3-2025-update