Private equity firms in Chicago: the 103 SEC-registered PE advisers, ranked by assets

This page is for founders weighing an offer from a Chicago buyer, people looking for work in the city's deal business, and B2B sellers whose customers are private equity firms and the companies they own. It names the firms from what they file with the SEC, then sets them against the Census count, which is far broader.

The largest private equity firms in Chicago

Source: SEC, Registered Investment Advisers file, October 2026: regulatory assets (Item 5.F), private fund counts (Item 7.B) and employees (Item 5.A) from each adviser's latest Form ADV. Employees are firm-wide, not only in Chicago.

Regulatory assets under management (RAUM) count each private fund's assets at market or fair value plus the capital investors have committed but not yet paid in, so the figure usually runs above the AUM a firm quotes. GCM Grosvenor, the one listed company in the table, reported $90.9 billion of AUM in its 10-K against $95.5 billion of RAUM on Form ADV.

How the list is built

1. Who files. An adviser that manages only private funds must register with the SEC once it has $150 million of private fund assets. Below that, and for venture capital advisers, it files a shorter report as an exempt reporting adviser.
2. Where. Main office ZIP code in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro area, the Census geography used below.
3. What counts as private equity. Form ADV defines a private equity fund as any private fund that isn't a hedge, liquidity, real estate, securitized asset or venture capital fund and doesn't give investors redemption rights in the ordinary course. So fund-of-funds, secondaries and private credit vehicles count alongside buyout funds.
4. The rule. We keep advisers whose PE funds are at least half their private funds and whose private fund assets are at least half their RAUM. That drops hedge fund managers and wealth managers that run a few PE vehicles: Balyasny Asset Management ($248.1 billion of RAUM) reports 3 PE funds among 43 private funds, and Cresset Asset Management ($78.9 billion) 25 among 145.
5. Ranking. By RAUM, the one size measure every registered adviser reports the same way.

How many private equity firms Chicago has

By size, the 103 split into 6 with $25 billion or more of RAUM, 15 with $5 billion to $25 billion, 33 with $1 billion to $5 billion, 21 with $500 million to $1 billion and 28 under $500 million. The median firm has 19 employees. Ninety-two have a Chicago main office; the other 11 are in Oak Brook, Evanston, Lake Forest, Oakbrook Terrace and Rosemont. Measured the same way, only the New York metro (483) and the San Francisco metro (111) are home to more.

What the Census count covers

County Business Patterns has no private equity code. The Census Bureau's NAICS index puts "private equity fund managing" in 523940, portfolio management and investment advice, alongside financial planners and mutual fund managers; venture capital companies sit in 523910. The data below use the group that contains both, NAICS 5239, other financial investment activities.

Nationally, 523940 makes up 67,802 of the group's 86,389 establishments, about 78%, and most of those are wealth and investment advisers. Set the SEC's 103 private equity advisers against 3,002 establishments and private equity is a small slice of the count, even allowing for firms with more than one office.

By size, 2,232 of the 3,002 establishments have 1 to 4 employees and 348 have 5 to 9. In broader bands, 2,753 have 1 to 19 employees, 198 have 20 to 99, and 51 have 100 or more (37 with 100 to 249, 8 with 250 to 499, 2 with 500 to 999 and 4 with 1,000 or more).

The Census Bureau published the three missing employee counts but flagged them as high-noise: the noise it adds for confidentiality changed each by 5% or more. Cook County holds 78% of the jobs. County Business Patterns counts establishments with paid employees, not companies, and leaves out the self-employed.

The listed firm based here

GCM Grosvenor's 10-K gives its address as 900 North Michigan Avenue. It reported $90.9 billion of AUM at the end of 2025, $64.1 billion of it in private markets, 553 employees including 185 investment professionals, and $557.6 million of operating revenue. The SEC's list of listed investment companies in Chicago also includes Morningstar and OppFi, but those are an investment research firm and a consumer credit platform. Thoma Bravo, GTCR, Madison Dearborn and the rest are privately held, so Form ADV is their public record.

Checking a firm before you deal with it

• Pull its Form ADV on the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site. Part 1 shows owners, RAUM, every private fund and any disciplinary history (Item 11); the Part 2A brochure explains fees and conflicts.
• Match the legal entity. Many firms file one umbrella registration for several related advisers: Thoma Bravo's covers 4 relying advisers and GTCR's 11. Make sure the fund named in your term sheet belongs to the adviser you checked.
• Check any banker or placement agent in FINRA BrokerCheck.

Selling to Chicago private equity firms

A firm buys in three places: for itself (fund administration, data, compliance and security), for each deal (diligence work) and through its portfolio companies, which spend far more than the firm does.

Illustrative example. The company, fee and results are invented; the counts are from the SEC data above.

Lakeview Diligence (lakeviewdiligence.example) runs IT and cybersecurity due diligence for buyers in the middle market. It targets the 54 Chicago PE advisers with $1 billion or more of RAUM, and two people at each: the deal partner who commissions diligence and the operating partner who inherits the findings. That's about 108 contacts. If 6 firms each send 2 deals a year at $35,000 a deal, that's $420,000 of revenue from a list that fits on one page. The research is the slow part: which firms closed a deal this quarter and who sits on each deal team. Bebop finds firms matching a description like this and researches each account. For finding the right partner, see how to find decision makers.

Subject: IT diligence on [portfolio company or sector]

Hi [first name],

[Firm] closed [deal] in [month]. The first 100 days usually turn up the IT and security issues diligence didn't price in: unsupported systems, missing MFA, a vendor nobody can name.

We run IT and cyber diligence for middle-market buyers in about two weeks, written for the operating partner who has to fix what we find.

Worth a call before your next LOI goes out?

[Your name]

Where to look

Next step: see how Chicago's firms compare with the biggest in the country in the largest private equity firms.