Private Markets Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Mia Scarlett, Business & Capital Markets | Last updated: September 5, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
Every headline number you have read about the size of private markets came from a consultancy model. This report uses the other source: the filings managers are legally required to submit. As of December 31, 2025, SEC-registered advisers and exempt reporting advisers reported $35.665 trillion in gross private fund assets across 118,832 funds on Form ADV Item 7.B.1 — a filed figure, not an estimate.
Quick Answer
Measured by regulatory filings rather than consultancy estimates, the private markets universe inside the U.S. regulatory perimeter held $35.665 trillion in gross assets across 118,832 funds at year-end 2025 (Form ADV Item 7.B.1). The narrower Form PF population — advisers with at least $150 million in private fund assets — reported $29.631 trillion gross and $19.013 trillion net across 58,891 funds. Axis Intelligence Research puts the Private Fund Concentration Ratio at 1.6764 and the Private Markets Penetration Index at 13.33 for the fourth quarter of 2025.
Key Findings
- According to Axis Intelligence Research’s reconciliation of SEC Form ADV Item 7.B.1 and Form PF data as of December 31, 2025, private funds inside the U.S. regulatory perimeter held $35.665 trillion in gross assets across 118,832 funds.
- Axis Intelligence Research finds that the Private Fund Concentration Ratio (PFCR) reached 1.6764 at year-end 2025, up from 1.4866 in 2021 — Form PF filers hold 83.08% of gross private fund assets while managing 49.56% of the funds.
- Axis Intelligence Research finds that the Private Markets Penetration Index (PMPI) stood at 13.33 at December 31, 2025, meaning private fund net assets equalled 13.33% of total U.S. household and nonprofit financial assets reported in the Federal Reserve’s Z.1 accounts.
- The gap between Form PF gross asset value and net asset value reached $10.618 trillion at year-end 2025, the first time the wedge has exceeded $10 trillion, giving a gross-to-net multiple of 1.5585x.
- Axis Intelligence Research calculates that 59,941 private funds — 50.44% of all funds reported on Form ADV — sit outside Form PF reporting entirely, yet account for only 16.92% of gross assets.
How Big Are U.S. Private Markets in 2026?
There are two filing-based answers, and they are not the same number. Both come from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, both are compulsory, and both are published quarterly or annually. Neither is a survey.
The broader measure is Form ADV Item 7.B.1, the private fund reporting section that every SEC-registered investment adviser (RIA) and exempt reporting adviser (ERA) must complete for each private fund it advises or sub-advises. The SEC’s Investment Adviser Statistics compile these into an annual series. At December 31, 2025, that series showed 118,832 private funds holding $35.665 trillion in gross assets, advised by 12,367 firms.
The narrower measure is Form PF, filed only by SEC-registered advisers with at least $150 million in private fund assets under management. The SEC’s Private Fund Statistics put the fourth-quarter 2025 reading at 58,891 funds, $29.631 trillion in gross asset value and $19.013 trillion in net asset value, filed by 4,153 advisers. The Commission’s own year-over-year comparisons show funds up 9.2%, gross assets up 18.5% and net assets up 16.3% against the fourth quarter of 2024.
Form ADV vs Form PF: what each measure actually counts
| Measure | Funds | Gross assets | Net assets | Advisers | Filing trigger | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Form ADV Item 7.B.1 | 118,832 | $35.665T | Not collected | 12,367 | Any RIA or ERA advising a private fund | SEC Investment Adviser Statistics, Aug 2026 report (CY2025) |
| Form PF | 58,891 | $29.631T | $19.013T | 4,153 | ≥$150M private fund AUM | SEC Private Fund Statistics, Aug 2026 release (2025Q4) |
Form ADV collects no net asset figure, which is why the widely quoted “private markets are $X trillion” claims are almost always gross numbers dressed as investor capital. Form PF collects both. That single difference is the reason the two datasets have to be read together rather than picked between.
What the $6.034 trillion gap represents
Subtracting one from the other produces the residual: 59,941 funds and $6.034 trillion in gross assets that sit outside Form PF, advised by 8,214 firms — 66.42% of all private fund advisers on file.
The composition of that residual is the finding. Those 59,941 funds represent 50.44% of every private fund on the SEC’s books but only 16.92% of gross assets. Average gross assets per fund inside Form PF are $503.1 million; outside it, $100.7 million. The ratio is 5.00x — an unusually clean number that falls out of the arithmetic rather than being rounded to it.
Mia Scarlett — Business & Capital Markets
Two-thirds of the firms in this market are invisible to the regulator’s detailed reporting regime, and they carry a sixth of the assets. That is not a scandal, it is a threshold working as designed. What it does mean is that anyone citing Form PF as “the size of private markets” is quoting a number that excludes half the funds, and anyone citing Form ADV is quoting a gross figure with no leverage adjustment and no net asset value behind it. The interesting question is not which one is right. It is why nobody publishes both side by side, given that the SEC publishes both.
What Is the Private Fund Concentration Ratio (PFCR)?
The PFCR — Private Fund Concentration Ratio is an Axis Intelligence Research metric that measures how far private fund assets are concentrated in the reporting tier above the Form PF threshold, relative to how many funds that tier actually runs.
PFCR formula and inputs
PFCR = (Form PF gross assets ÷ Form ADV gross assets)
÷ (Form PF fund count ÷ Form ADV fund count)
At December 31, 2025:
- Asset share: $29.631T ÷ $35.665T = 83.08%
- Fund share: 58,891 ÷ 118,832 = 49.56%
- PFCR = 83.08% ÷ 49.56% = 1.6764
A reading of 1.0 would mean large filers hold assets in exact proportion to the number of funds they run. Every point above 1.0 is asset weight concentrating into the reporting tier faster than fund count follows it. All inputs are filed figures; no estimation enters the calculation, and both inputs carry the same December 31 snapshot date.
PFCR readings, 2021 to 2025
| Year-end | Form PF asset share | Form PF fund share | Form PF adviser share | PFCR | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 80.92% | 54.43% | 34.43% | 1.4866 | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF and Form ADV |
| 2022 | 82.27% | 51.35% | 33.67% | 1.6023 | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF and Form ADV |
| 2023 | 81.81% | 50.32% | 34.69% | 1.6259 | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF and Form ADV |
| 2024 | 81.62% | 49.88% | 34.73% | 1.6362 | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF and Form ADV |
| 2025 | 83.08% | 49.56% | 33.58% | 1.6764 | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF and Form ADV |
The series rose in every year of the window. The mechanism is visible in the component columns: the asset share moved sideways between 2022 and 2024 while the fund share kept falling, then the asset share jumped 146 basis points in 2025 as the fund share fell again. New fund formation is running faster below the threshold than above it, and asset growth is running faster above it than below.
The PFCR is deliberately built to the same shape as the AWCR published in our wealth management research, so the two ratios can be read against each other without a methodology adjustment.
How Much of U.S. Household Wealth Sits in Private Funds?
The PMPI — Private Markets Penetration Index is an Axis Intelligence Research metric expressing private fund net assets as a percentage of the financial assets held by U.S. households and nonprofit organizations, as reported in the Federal Reserve’s Financial Accounts of the United States (Z.1).
PMPI formula and inputs
PMPI = (Form PF aggregate private fund net asset value
÷ Z.1 household and nonprofit total financial assets) × 100
At December 31, 2025: $19.013T ÷ $142.6T × 100 = 13.33.
Net asset value is the correct numerator here because the question is how much investor capital, not how much balance sheet, sits in private structures. Using gross assets would double-count borrowed money against a denominator that contains none.
PMPI readings, 2022 to 2025
| Year-end | Private fund net assets | Household financial assets | PMPI | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | $14.069T | $108.8T | 12.93 | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF and Federal Reserve Z.1 |
| 2023 | $15.131T | $119.1T | 12.70 | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF and Federal Reserve Z.1 |
| 2024 | $16.345T | $130.5T | 12.52 | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF and Federal Reserve Z.1 |
| 2025 | $19.013T | $142.6T | 13.33 | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF and Federal Reserve Z.1 |
This is the reading that contradicts the prevailing story. Private markets grew every year from 2022 to 2024 — and lost ground as a share of household wealth in both of those years, because listed equities grew faster. Private fund net assets compounded at 10.56% a year from 2022 to 2025; household financial assets compounded at 9.44%. The gap only opened in 2025, when private fund net assets added 16.32% against a 9.27% rise in the denominator.
One methodological refusal, stated plainly. The Z.1 household and nonprofit sector is a residual sector: assets of entities the Financial Accounts do not separately identify, including domestic hedge funds and private equity funds, are allocated there. Adding pension fund and insurance company financial assets to the denominator would look more complete and would be wrong, because defined-contribution pension assets already appear inside the household sector as indirectly held securities. Axis Intelligence Research publishes the PMPI on the household-sector denominator alone and does not compute a “households and institutions” variant, because the two would double-count. Any competing figure using a combined denominator is measuring a different thing.
Mia Scarlett — Business & Capital Markets
Strip out the 2025 print and the penetration story of the past three years is a decline, not a boom. That is the number the fundraising decks skip. It does not mean private markets stalled — $19.013 trillion of net assets is a record — it means the public market denominator grew faster for two consecutive years, and a ratio has two sides. The 2025 turn is worth watching precisely because it is the first year the numerator won, and one year is a data point rather than a trend.
How Leveraged Are Private Funds? The Gross-to-Net Wedge
Form PF Question 8 collects gross asset value; Question 9 collects net asset value. The difference between them is the clearest leverage signal in U.S. financial regulatory data, and it is published every quarter without anyone drawing the subtraction.
| Year-end | Gross asset value | Net asset value | Wedge | Multiple | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $20.438T | $14.093T | $6.345T | 1.4502x | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF |
| 2022 | $20.507T | $14.069T | $6.438T | 1.4576x | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF |
| 2023 | $22.799T | $15.131T | $7.668T | 1.5068x | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF |
| 2024 | $25.001T | $16.345T | $8.656T | 1.5296x | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF |
| 2025 | $29.631T | $19.013T | $10.618T | 1.5585x | Axis Intelligence Research, from SEC Form PF |
Year-end 2025 is the first observation with a wedge above $10 trillion. The multiple has climbed in every year since 2021, from 1.4502x to 1.5585x. Gross assets grew 18.52% in 2025 while net assets grew 16.32% — the gap between those two growth rates is the leverage story in one line, and it is why a report that quotes only the $35.665 trillion gross figure is describing a balance sheet rather than a pool of investor capital.
How Many Private Fund Managers Are There, and How Big Are They?
Manager count is where the market looks least like the picture the trade press paints. Of the 4,153 advisers filing Form PF at year-end 2025, 1,819 — 43.80% reported fewer than five funds. Only 72 advisers, 1.73% of the population, reported 100 or more.
| Funds reported per adviser | Advisers, 2025Q4 | Share | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fewer than 5 | 1,819 | 43.80% | SEC Private Fund Statistics, Table 1.4 |
| 5 to 10 | 900 | 21.67% | SEC Private Fund Statistics, Table 1.4 |
| 10 to 25 | 903 | 21.74% | SEC Private Fund Statistics, Table 1.4 |
| 25 to 100 | 459 | 11.05% | SEC Private Fund Statistics, Table 1.4 |
| 100 or more | 72 | 1.73% | SEC Private Fund Statistics, Table 1.4 |
Advisers running 25 or more funds account for 12.79% of Form PF filers. That group grew where it matters most: the 100-or-more bucket went from 42 advisers at year-end 2021 to 72 at year-end 2025, a 71.4% increase over four years — the fastest-growing segment of the manager population by a wide margin, at a time when total Form PF adviser count rose just 3.62% year over year.
Funds per adviser tells the same story from the other direction. Form PF filers averaged 11.65 funds each in 2021 and 14.18 in 2025. Across the full Form ADV universe the figure is 9.61. Platform managers are adding vehicles faster than the industry is adding firms.
How Fast Are Private Markets Growing?
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Form ADV private funds | 108,099 | 118,832 | +9.93% | SEC Investment Adviser Statistics |
| Form ADV gross assets | $30.630T | $35.665T | +16.44% | SEC Investment Adviser Statistics |
| Form ADV private fund advisers | 11,542 | 12,367 | +7.15% | SEC Investment Adviser Statistics |
| Form PF funds | 53,925 | 58,891 | +9.21% | SEC Private Fund Statistics |
| Form PF gross asset value | $25.001T | $29.631T | +18.52% | SEC Private Fund Statistics |
| Form PF net asset value | $16.345T | $19.013T | +16.32% | SEC Private Fund Statistics |
| Form PF advisers | 4,008 | 4,153 | +3.62% | SEC Private Fund Statistics |
Over five years the two datasets agree closely on trend: Form PF net assets compounded at 10.56% a year from year-end 2020 to year-end 2025, and Form ADV gross assets compounded at 10.77% over the same span. Fund counts grew at roughly the same pace as assets on the Form ADV side (+9.93% against +16.44% in 2025), while adviser counts lagged both.
The consistent pattern across every table above: assets grow faster than funds, funds grow faster than managers.
Why This Report Publishes No Strategy-Level Data
Both SEC datasets break out private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, real estate, securitised asset funds and liquidity funds separately. This page publishes none of those splits, on purpose.
Strategy-level figures are covered in dedicated Axis Intelligence Research reports where each asset class gets the fund-structure context, fee mechanics and vintage detail it needs — detail that a market-wide page cannot carry without misleading through compression. Direct lending, drawdown fund and evergreen structure data belongs in our private credit statistics report; buyout and continuation vehicle data in private equity statistics; fund formation and dry powder in venture capital statistics; and qualifying hedge fund reporting in hedge fund statistics.
This page is the denominator those four sit inside. Keeping the boundary means the total published here always reconciles to the filings rather than to the sum of four separately updated pages.
Methodology
How this dataset was assembled. Every figure in this report was retrieved from a primary source document during the production session on September 5, 2026. No statistic comes from model memory, from a consultancy estimate, or from any secondary aggregator. Source URLs and retrieval dates are recorded per row in the accompanying CSV.
Sources. Form PF aggregates come from the SEC Division of Investment Management Analytics Office’s Private Fund Statistics data files (August 2026 release, covering data through the fourth calendar quarter of 2025). Form ADV Item 7.B.1 aggregates come from the SEC’s Investment Adviser Statistics, Total Private Funds Advised by RIAs or ERAs (August 2026 report, calendar-year series). Household financial asset totals come from the Federal Reserve Board’s Financial Accounts of the United States (Z.1), June 11, 2026 release.
Proprietary metrics. Two Axis Intelligence Research metrics appear in this report, both with formulas disclosed inline above.
- PFCR (Private Fund Concentration Ratio) = (Form PF gross assets ÷ Form ADV gross assets) ÷ (Form PF fund count ÷ Form ADV fund count). Components: two filed asset totals and two filed fund counts, all at the same December 31 snapshot. No weighting, no normalisation, no baseline adjustment. A reading is reproducible from the four inputs published in the CSV.
- PMPI (Private Markets Penetration Index) = (Form PF net asset value ÷ Z.1 household and nonprofit total financial assets) × 100. Components: one filed asset total and one Federal Reserve sector total, both at quarter-end.
Both metrics are published under CC BY 4.0. Where methodology changes in future releases, the change will be stated on this page and historical readings will not be silently restated.
Arithmetic verification. Every derived figure was computed twice — once in floating point and once in exact rational arithmetic — and every prose figure was matched programmatically against its CSV row before publication.
Scope of these measures. Form PF and Form ADV capture the private funds advised by advisers registered with or reporting to the SEC. That perimeter is regulatory rather than geographic: it includes non-U.S.-domiciled funds advised by SEC-registered firms and excludes funds advised solely by state-registered or non-U.S. advisers with no SEC nexus. Figures should be read as “the private fund universe visible to U.S. securities regulators,” which is the population the filings define. Form ADV values are calendar-year observations using the most recent report available for each fund in the year; Form PF values are quarter-end. The SEC restates prior statistics as amended filings arrive, so historical readings in this dataset may move at the next release. Form ADV collects gross assets only, which is why the PMPI uses Form PF net asset value.
About This Dataset
private-markets-statistics.csv contains 125 observations covering private fund counts, gross and net asset values, adviser counts, adviser scale distribution, growth rates, and the PFCR and PMPI readings, spanning calendar 2020 through the first quarter of 2026. Every row carries its source organisation, source document, source URL, retrieval date, primary-source flag, and — for derived rows — a method note pointing to the formula disclosed above.
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Free to reuse, republish and build on with attribution.
Attribution line: Axis Intelligence Research, Private Markets Statistics 2026, 2026.
How to Cite This Report
APA: Axis Intelligence Research. (2026, September 5). Private markets statistics 2026: Size, concentration and leverage measured from SEC filings. Axis Intelligence. https://axis-intelligence.com/private-markets-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research. “Private Markets Statistics 2026: Size, Concentration and Leverage Measured From SEC Filings.” Axis Intelligence, 5 Sept. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/private-markets-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research. “Private Markets Statistics 2026: Size, Concentration and Leverage Measured From SEC Filings.” Axis Intelligence. September 5, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/private-markets-statistics/.
Private Markets Statistics: Frequently Asked Questions
Why does the SEC report two different private fund asset totals?
Because Form ADV and Form PF have different filing populations. Form ADV Item 7.B.1 captures every private fund advised or sub-advised by any SEC-registered or exempt reporting adviser, producing $35.665 trillion in gross assets across 118,832 funds at year-end 2025. Form PF only captures advisers holding at least $150 million in private fund AUM, producing $29.631 trillion across 58,891 funds. Neither figure is wrong; they answer different questions.
Does Form PF gross asset value mean the same thing as assets under management?
No, and conflating them is the most common error in private markets reporting. Form PF Question 8 collects gross asset value, which includes borrowed money and other balance sheet gross-up. Question 9 collects net asset value, which is closer to investor capital. At year-end 2025 the two differed by $10.618 trillion — a 1.5585x multiple. A fund reporting $10 billion gross may hold well under $7 billion of limited partner capital.
What does a PFCR reading of 1.6764 actually tell an allocator?
It says that for every percentage point of fund count held by advisers above the Form PF threshold, that group holds 1.6764 percentage points of gross assets. The ratio has risen every year since 2021, when it read 1.4866. For an allocator, a rising PFCR means the manager set that clears institutional diligence thresholds is absorbing asset growth faster than it is absorbing fund count — consolidation at the platform level rather than at the vehicle level.
Are private markets taking share from public markets?
Not on the filings, until 2025. The PMPI fell from 12.93 at year-end 2022 to 12.70 in 2023 and 12.52 in 2024 as listed equity values in the Z.1 household sector grew faster than private fund net assets, then rose to 13.33 in 2025. Private fund net assets grew in every one of those years. Share of household wealth is a ratio, and for two consecutive years the denominator won.
How many funds fall below the Form PF reporting threshold?
59,941 funds at year-end 2025 — 50.44% of every private fund reported to the SEC — advised by 8,214 firms representing 66.42% of all private fund advisers. Those funds carry $6.034 trillion, or 16.92% of gross assets. Average gross assets per fund below the threshold are $100.7 million against $503.1 million above it, a 5.00x difference.
Do these figures include private credit, private equity and venture capital?
Yes. Both SEC datasets cover all private fund types, and the totals on this page are the sum across them. Strategy-level breakdowns are published separately in the Axis Intelligence Research reports on private credit, private equity, venture capital and hedge funds, so that each asset class carries the structural context a market-wide total cannot.
Are the manager counts firms or funds?
Firms. At year-end 2025 there were 12,367 advisers reporting private funds on Form ADV and 4,153 filing Form PF, against 118,832 and 58,891 funds respectively. Averages are 9.61 funds per Form ADV adviser and 14.18 per Form PF filer, up from 11.65 in 2021.
Will the DOL’s proposed 401(k) alternative assets rule change these numbers?
Not yet, and not in this dataset. The Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration proposed a fiduciary safe harbour for alternative assets in defined contribution plans on March 30, 2026, following the August 2025 executive order on the subject. It is a proposed rule, no capital has flowed under it, and none of the figures on this page reflect it. Any effect would appear first as growth in the Form ADV and Form PF asset series, and Axis Intelligence Research will report it there when it does.
How reliable are these numbers compared with consultancy market sizing?
They are compulsory regulatory filings with legal consequences for misreporting, compiled and published by the SEC’s own Analytics Office, not survey responses or modelled estimates. The tradeoff is revision: the SEC restates prior statistics as amended filings arrive, so a figure for a past quarter can move slightly between releases. Consultancy figures are revised too, without the audit trail.
What would change the PFCR reading fastest?
A change in the $150 million Form PF reporting threshold, or a wave of sub-threshold fund launches. The ratio is a boundary measure, so it moves on where the boundary sits as much as on manager behaviour. The SEC has proposed Form PF amendments during 2026; if the reporting population changes, the PFCR series will be re-baselined transparently rather than spliced.