Largest private equity firms: the top 15 by assets under management, from their own reports

This list is for sellers, analysts and job seekers who need to know which private equity firms are biggest and what that size is made of. It ranks listed firms by the total assets under management (AUM) each reported for the end of 2025 (or March 2026 for three firms with March years) in its 10-K or annual report, and shows the part that is private equity by the firm's own measure. A second table covers the large private firms that publish no annual report, using the figures they file with the SEC on Form ADV.

The 15 largest listed private equity firms by AUM

Total AUM and employees are as each firm's 10-K or annual report states them. Euro figures are converted at the Federal Reserve's 2025 average rate of $1.1306 per euro (G.5A, 5 January 2026). CVC's headquarters is its registered office. Hamilton Lane and StepStone also advise on much larger pools they don't manage (assets under advisement), shown after "plus".

The private equity column needs reading with care, because each firm draws the line differently:

• Blackstone's Private Equity segment includes infrastructure, life sciences, secondaries and GP stakes as well as corporate buyouts.
• Apollo's equity strategy of $189.2 billion includes $78.8 billion of corporate private equity and $17.7 billion of hybrid value, plus infrastructure equity.
• Carlyle's Global Private Equity segment includes real estate and infrastructure funds; its corporate private equity funds alone held $104.3 billion.
• TPG's figure is the sum of its Capital platform ($91 billion, including the $58.3 billion TPG Capital buyout business) and Growth platform ($32 billion).
• EQT reports fee-generating AUM by segment, not total AUM, so its €76 billion understates the private equity assets it oversees.

Just below the cut: banks such as Goldman Sachs run large private equity programs inside their asset management divisions, but they aren't standalone private equity firms, so they're left out.

The largest privately held private equity firms

Thoma Bravo, Bain Capital, Silver Lake and most of the other firms on fundraising rankings publish no annual report. Each US-registered adviser does, though, file Form ADV with the SEC, and the SEC publishes the data monthly. These are the largest private equity advisers in the October 2026 file whose owners don't file annual reports with the SEC:

Source: SEC, Registered Investment Advisers, October 2026 file, Item 5.F(2)(c) and Item 5.A of each adviser's latest Form ADV. HarbourVest invests mainly through other managers' funds, secondaries and co-investments rather than buying companies itself.

Regulatory AUM isn't the same as the AUM in the first table. The Form ADV instructions tell advisers to count a private fund's assets at fair value without deducting debt, and to add uncalled investor commitments, valued within 90 days before the filing. It also covers one adviser entity, so Bain Capital Credit ($76.3 billion) files separately from Bain Capital Private Equity. Use the figure to compare private firms with each other, not with a listed firm's reported AUM.

Why the rankings disagree

The top results for this search rank on four different things:

Two common mistakes follow. Some lists rank firms by their own balance-sheet total assets, which measures the manager's own investments, not the capital it manages: Carlyle's balance sheet showed $29.1 billion of total assets at the end of 2025, against $477 billion of AUM. Others quote Brookfield's or Apollo's total AUM as if it were private equity, when private equity is about a fifth of Apollo's and less than a sixth of Brookfield's.

How we built the list

1. Who counts. Listed firms whose main business is managing private equity and other private-markets funds, with their latest annual report filed by 30 October 2026. Banks and insurers with private equity units are left out.
2. What's counted. Total AUM exactly as each firm defines it in its 10-K or annual report, at its fiscal year-end. Definitions differ: KKR counts the asset value of its Global Atlantic insurance companies, and Apollo's total includes $392.2 billion it manages for Athene, its retirement services business, which is part of why both are far larger than their private equity businesses.
3. Currency. Euro figures at $1.1306 per euro, the Federal Reserve's 2025 average. Partners Group and ICG report AUM in dollars.
4. Checking. Every figure in both tables was matched to the filing, the firm's report or the SEC data file. We don't use third-party estimates.
5. What's missing. Private firms outside the US that don't register with the SEC, and private firms' total AUM where they file under several advisers.

What the list is good for if you sell B2B

Private equity firms buy in three places, and the firm itself is the smallest.

The firm. Even the largest have only a few thousand staff: Blackstone about 5,285, Carlyle more than 2,500 and Hellman & Friedman 120 on its Form ADV. They buy data, fund administration, legal, compliance and deal-sourcing tools, usually through the chief operating officer or the head of each strategy.

The portfolio companies. This is where the volume is. EQT says its funds' portfolio companies employ more than 550,000 people, about 300 times its own headcount. Each one buys like any company its size, but the deal team and operating partners can steer a decision across many at once.

The purchasing programs. Some firms run group buying for the companies they own. Carlyle's 10-K says 75 portfolio companies take part in its optional procurement program, with more than 100 category and preferred vendor arrangements covering human capital management, employee benefits, corporate real estate, IT, and treasury and risk. Getting onto one preferred vendor list can open dozens of accounts. This is general guidance; whether a firm runs such a program, and how binding it is, varies.

Our guide to the NAICS code for private equity explains how these firms are classified, and the private equity firms in New York City page covers where many of them are based.

Worked example

Illustrative example. Benefitly (benefitly.example) sells benefits administration software at an illustrative $4 per employee per month. Its seller compares two routes into the same private equity firm:

• One portfolio company at a time: a 2,000-employee company is worth 2,000 x $4 x 12 = $96,000 a year, with a full sales cycle for each.
• Through the firm's procurement program: if 10 of the participating portfolio companies average 2,000 employees and adopt over two years, that's 20,000 x $4 x 12 = $960,000 a year from one preferred vendor agreement.

The seller targets the head of portfolio operations or procurement at the firm, brings one reference from a company the firm already owns, and asks which portfolio companies are renewing benefits contracts in the next 12 months. Finding those companies and their HR leaders is the slow part; Bebop researches each account in a list like this and names the people to contact.

Next step: watch for new funds and acquisitions with the funding signals guide, which covers when a newly bought company starts buying.