We just published our Q2 2026 Private Credit Benchmark Review. The headline story: the asset class is performing well, but most of that value is still on paper. Recent vintages are posting the strongest returns of the current cycle, and the real question is whether distributions catch up over time.

Recent Vintages Are Leading the Cycle

Median net IRRs for recent vintages came in ahead of most of the 2013-2021 cohort: 11.8% for 2022, 10.8% for 2023, and 9.4% for 2024. The 2024 vintage is still very early, so that number will move.

The distribution picture is a different story. Median DPI is 0.34x or lower for every vintage from 2021 forward. That is not a red flag at this stage in the fund lifecycle, but it means LPs are still waiting to see realized returns. The comparison to watch is whether these vintages track to where the 2013 to 2018 cohort stood at the same age. There is not enough data yet to say.

Flexible Strategies Have Had an Edge

Across recent vintages, managers with mandates to invest across the capital structure have generally outperformed direct lending and diversified credit funds. Special situations, opportunistic credit, and mezzanine strategies have shown stronger returns than standard senior loan origination.

Asset-based lending has emerged as a steadier area of strength, holding up well across multiple environments.

Dispersion Is Widening

This is the number worth paying attention to. The gap between top- and bottom-quartile net IRR was 3.9 percentage points in 2020. By 2024, it had widened to 9.8 points.

Alongside that, defaults and payment-in-kind usage ticked up this quarter. The headline numbers still look solid, but credit stress is becoming more visible underneath them. As the cycle matures, manager selection and underwriting discipline matter more than they did when the tide was high.

The full report, including vintage-level IRR, TVPI, and DPI tables by sub-asset class, is available inside Dakota Marketplace. Not a member yet? Book a demo to get access.

We tracked 61 venture funds that held final closes in Q2 2026, raising $33.6 billion combined. The headline number is large, but the story underneath it is concentration. A small number of very large vehicles drove most of the capital, and AI-focused strategies dominated sector allocation.

Where the Capital Went

Late-stage and growth vehicles led the quarter with $23.0 billion, or 68% of the total. Early-stage funds added $6.8 billion (20%). Pre-seed, seed, secondaries, and fund-of-funds vehicles made up the rest.

On the sector side, AI and software dedicated strategies raised $14.1 billion across just ten funds, accounting for 42% of the quarter's total. Deep tech, defense, and frontier technology funds raised $3.3 billion across twelve funds. Crypto-adjacent strategies raised $3.2 billion, and healthcare strategies brought in $1.7 billion.

AI Is Rewriting What Venture Rounds Look Like

The company-level financings this quarter were as notable as the fund closes. Anduril raised $5 billion in a Series H at a $61 billion valuation. A Bezos-backed industrial AI startup secured $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation. DeepSeek closed over $7 billion above a $50 billion valuation. Ramp raised $750 million at $44 billion.

The round that got the most attention: a London-based AI lab called Ineffable Intelligence raised $1.1 billion in a round labeled seed-stage, at a $5.1 billion valuation. At that size, the series label describes the company's narrative more than the check behind it.

Key Takeaways

Venture fundraising in Q2 2026 was highly concentrated in a small number of very large vehicles. Late-stage strategies alone accounted for over two-thirds of the total, reflecting a market shaped by a handful of large managers rather than broad-based activity.

AI dominated both fund formation and company-level financing. The vast majority of funds that closed this quarter have some AI-related exposure, and the mega-rounds in AI, defense, and industrial tech are happening at valuations that were rare even two years ago.

The full report is available inside Dakota Marketplace. Not a member yet? Book a demo to get access.

We hosted our August 26 Dakota Live today with 230 registrants (157 customers, 61 prospects) and the topic was one we've been getting a lot of questions on: what's the difference between Dakota's API and the MCP connector, and when should you use each?

Priya Stanley (CTO), Rob Robertson (President), and Pat Tighe (Head of Product) walked through the whole thing. The replay is up now.

API vs. MCP: They're Not the Same Thing

The framing that kept coming up: the API is for building, MCP is for asking. Most firms end up using both.

The API is a structured connection between two systems. Your firm sends a request, we return clean data, and it goes straight into your CRM, BI tool, or whatever you've built. You own the data and run your own workflows on top of it.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard from Anthropic. It lets Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, or Amazon Bedrock query our database live, conversationally, with no code. You get real-time answers without ever taking possession of the underlying data.

The quick version: filling your CRM is API territory. Asking which private credit investors fit a Boston trip is MCP.

What Firms Are Actually Doing

Rob shared live examples on the call. Salespeople use MCP for on-the-fly questions since it needs no setup and is included in every Dakota Marketplace subscription at no extra cost.

On the API side, one firm gets an automatic alert the moment we add a new family office to the database. MCP can't do that since it only answers when queried. Other firms pull our manager presentation library (9,000+ decks) and consultant reviews through the API for competitive intelligence. A common pattern is a nightly job pulling only accounts modified that day rather than the full dataset.

For firms without in-house engineering, our out-of-the-box CRM integrations with Salesforce, DealCloud, HubSpot, Backstop, Dynamo, Affinity, Pinnacle, and Altvia give you structured data access without building against the API yourself.

On Security

The top compliance and IT question: how do firms know their data is secure inside an AI assistant? Priya covered this directly. Queries route through Anthropic's or OpenAI's infrastructure, not ours. We authenticate the user and return authorized data but never see the prompts. With the API, the firm pulls data into its own environment and controls it entirely.

Watch the Replay

The full session covers the framing, live customer examples, security architecture, an API portal walkthrough, and Q&A. Worth watching if you're trying to figure out which approach fits your firm or need to explain the difference to your team.

Watch the replay | Book time with our team

Private real estate is moving through a selective recovery rather than a broad-based rebound. The performance record still reflects higher financing costs, weaker valuation support, and limited exits, with the 2021-2022 vintages showing the clearest effects of the market reset.

What the Numbers Show

Recent-Vintage IRRs Lag the Prior Cycle

The 2021 and 2022 median net IRRs were 5.7% and 4.3%, respectively, versus 6.5%-8.8% for the 2015-2018 vintages. The 2023 vintage is showing a 7.6% median, reflecting a more favorable entry basis. The 2024 results remain too early to read.

Liquidity Is the Defining Constraint

Median DPI is 0.24x or lower for every vintage from 2019 onward. For the 2021 cohort, a 1.10x median TVPI against 0.22x DPI means most reported value remains unrealized rather than returned to LPs. The gap between reported value and cash returned is the central question for any LP evaluating current real estate exposure.

Opportunistic Has Held Up Better Than Value-Add

Opportunistic funds generated median net IRRs of 6.0% and 8.4% in the 2022 and 2023 vintages, respectively, compared with 2.5% and 3.1% for value-add funds in the same years. The pattern supports an advantage for flexible mandates and newer entry bases through the reset period.

Property Type Has Not Determined Outcomes

Industrial, logistics, housing, and digital-infrastructure funds appear at both ends of the recent performance range. Manager selection, entry basis, capital structure, and asset-level execution remain more explanatory than sector labels alone.

What This Means for Allocators and Fundraisers

The performance divergence within real estate is wider than the asset-class headline suggests. Managers who can demonstrate favorable entry timing and realized distributions are moving through diligence faster than those presenting unrealized marks without context.

The full benchmark tables by vintage are available inside Dakota Marketplace, including net IRR, TVPI, DPI, and RVPI cut by strategy and property type. Every data point was researched and verified by Dakota's 60-person data team.

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Eighteen months ago, Dakota Marketplace tracked 35,397 public investment records, allocations and commitments reported by public pensions, endowments, foundations, and sovereign wealth funds. That number now stands at 66,334, an 87% increase. But the headline growth rate hides the real story: nearly two-thirds of every record added since February 2025 belongs to an allocator type that did not exist in this dataset at all until August 2025.

The Split: Where the Two Lines Pull Apart

Total records and core allocator records tracked within a few hundred of each other from 2022 through mid-2025. Then, starting in mid-2026, they split apart sharply. That split is the entire story.

Insurance Company General Accounts: Zero to 19,954

Insurance Company General Accounts, the investment portfolios insurers hold to back their liabilities, had zero records in this dataset as of February 2025. Today there are 19,954. The first record appears August 20, 2025. Growth was minimal through the rest of 2025 and early 2026, until June and July 2026, which alone account for 18,823 records — 94% of the entire category in a six-week window.

This was not a gradual build. It reads as a deliberate, large-scale addition of an entire allocator category to the public investment dataset, concentrated almost entirely in six weeks in the middle of 2026. A category that did not exist a year ago now represents roughly 30% of the total dataset.

Core Allocator Growth: 31%, Not 87%

Strip out Insurance Company General Accounts and the underlying growth is more modest, but still real. Core allocators grew from 35,397 to 46,380 records, up 31%. That is a healthy and steady expansion worth knowing on its own terms, and a very different number to build a target list on.

Public Pension Funds remain the largest category by far and drove most of the core growth in absolute terms. Sovereign Wealth Funds grew the fastest by percentage (175%), though off a small base. Foundation and Corporate Pension Plan records were essentially flat.

The distinction matters. Anyone citing the 87% figure without separating the new Insurance category is overstating how much the traditional public-plan universe actually expanded.

Private Markets Did All the Moving

Every private markets asset class more than doubled, or came close to it, while public equities and fixed income barely moved. Private Equity added the most records outright (15,393 new records). Private Infrastructure grew the fastest by percentage (153%). This pattern holds whether or not the Insurance records are included — insurers report primarily against private-markets sleeves too, so the asset-class growth is not purely an artifact of the new allocator category.

Asset class growth since February 2025: Private Equity, Credit, Infrastructure, Venture Capital, and Real Assets all grew between 85% and 153%. Public equities and fixed income were essentially flat.

What This Means for Fundraisers Using the Data

Insurance Company General Account is now a first-class allocator segment in this dataset at nearly 20,000 records, roughly 30% of the total. If your prospecting has not accounted for insurer general account activity before, it is now a meaningful share of what is tracked.

Treat the headline 87% growth figure with the Insurance caveat attached. The real core growth is 31%, still solid, but a very different number from 87%.

This also looks like an active, recent build rather than a finished catalog. The Insurance surge happened in the last two months of available data. Expect continued additions to both this new category and core allocator types.

Dakota Marketplace tracks 66,334 public investment records across public pensions, endowments, foundations, sovereign wealth funds, and insurance company general accounts. Filter by allocator type, asset class, and investment date, then connect each record directly to the fund, strategy, and decision-makers behind it.

Download the full report | Book a demo of Dakota Marketplace

Private equity is moving through a period of adjustment rather than decline. Returns have cooled from the highs of the last decade as higher interest rates and elevated entry valuations continue to work through recent vintages. The market beneath that headline trend has grown noticeably more uneven. Manager selection and strategy now matter more than broad market exposure.

Liquidity remains the defining constraint on the asset class, with capital returning to investors more slowly than in prior cycles. Structures built around control over price and holding period are pulling ahead of those still tied to the assumptions of the previous cycle.

What the Data Shows

2021 and 2022 Vintages Are Under Pressure

IRR performance for the 2021 and 2022 vintages remains softer than the vintages preceding them. Capital deployed during that window was put to work at higher valuations and lower interest rates. The reversal of both conditions is the primary driver of the underperformance. The 2023 vintage has already recovered to levels last seen before the 2021 downturn, and the 2024 vintage is still early in its development period.

Distributions Have Declined Steadily Since 2017

DPI across the asset class has trended down since 2017. Managers are holding assets for longer than in prior cycles. At the lower end of the market, many are choosing to develop assets through buy-and-build strategies over extended periods rather than pursuing faster exits. The result is that capital is returning to investors more slowly, even in portfolios where unrealized value looks healthy on paper.

Secondaries and Co-Investments Are Outperforming

Both structures give investors greater control over entry price and holding period than a primary commitment to a blind pool fund. That advantage has grown more valuable while exit timing remains uncertain. Secondaries buyers can underwrite at a discount to NAV and set their own entry point. Direct co-investment removes the J-curve and allows selective exposure to specific assets rather than an entire fund. Both have distinguished themselves in the current environment.

What This Means for Fundraisers and Allocators

Fundraising activity has been broadly positive, with capital formation accelerating across several markets. But the dispersion between managers is wider than it has been in years. Allocators are spending more time on track record verification, vintage analysis, and peer benchmarking before making commitments. GPs who can position their performance credibly against true peer sets are moving through diligence faster than those relying on self-reported comparisons.

The full benchmark tables by vintage are available inside Dakota Marketplace, including IRR, TVPI, DPI, and RVPI cut by strategy and geography. Every data point in this report was researched and verified by Dakota's 60-person data team.

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Benchmarking a fund today typically means three vendors, two reconciliation passes, and a spreadsheet nobody completely trusts.

The deal-flow database has thin performance history. The benchmarking tool has narrow strategy coverage. The manager-reported figures have not been independently verified. Everyone working in private markets pays the same tax: incomplete comparisons, stale vintages, and hours spent reconciling numbers that should already agree.

Joe, Powered by Dakota was built to eliminate that tax.

What Joe Actually Contains

Joe brings four data sets together in a single platform: private fund performance, GP and sponsor intelligence, private company transaction data, and custom benchmarking.

Private Fund Performance

159,000+ performance records across 18,000+ funds and 7 asset classes: private equity, venture capital, private credit, private real estate, real assets and infrastructure, hedge funds, and evergreen and interval funds. Net IRR, TVPI, DPI, and RVPI are standardized across strategy and vintage so direct comparisons are possible without manual adjustment.

GP and Sponsor Intelligence

8,000+ active sponsor profiles across 20,000+ tracked investment firms, including investment theses, portfolio companies, deal activity, and team intelligence. Know your counterpart before the call.

Private Company Transactions

Deal-level entry multiples, structures, and sector coverage across sponsored and non-sponsored businesses, including proprietary coverage of 143,000+ non-sponsored companies that most databases do not track.

Custom Benchmarking

Build peer groups by vintage, strategy, geography, fund size, and portfolio company sector. The comparisons reflect the criteria that matter to your analysis, not a vendor's predefined categories.

Every record is reviewed by Joe's research team before publication.

Coverage by Asset Class

Private Equity: 5,200+ funds | 30,500+ records

Private Real Estate: 4,600+ funds | 77,000+ records

Private Credit: 1,900+ funds | 10,500+ records

Real Assets: 1,300+ funds | 20,500+ records

Venture Capital: 1,100+ funds | 5,700+ records

Private Infrastructure: 550+ funds | 7,000+ records

Hedge Funds / Liquid Alts: 2,800+ funds | 4,600+ records

Evergreen and Interval Funds: 300+ funds | 600+ records

The Pricing Gap

Comparable platforms price this access at $30,000 for three user licenses.

Joe is $9,500 a year for up to five user licenses.

That is not a modest discount. It is a different cost structure entirely. Five seats for roughly a third of the price means the whole team has access, with no login rationing and no tiered upsell path required to reach real functionality.

Built on Dakota's Data Infrastructure

Joe runs on the same data infrastructure that powers Dakota Marketplace, the LP intelligence platform used by fundraisers across every institutional and wealth channel globally. That means the dataset behind Joe is established and actively maintained, not a v1 product still filling gaps.

Dakota Marketplace is for fundraisers building LP pipelines. Joe is for the people on the other side of the table: allocators, consultants, and GPs who need independent performance data to make decisions.

Who Joe Is For

Joe is built for the people who have to defend the number.

Investment consultants benchmarking manager performance against true peer sets. Allocators and CIOs validating GP track records during diligence. GPs and IR teams positioning fund performance credibly against market comparables. Secondaries buyers underwriting with performance context across vintage and strategy. Family offices and OCIOs evaluating fund commitments with independent data. PE deal teams validating entry multiples against real transaction comps. Investment bankers mapping sponsor activity for pitch books.

Read the full post | Book a demo of Joe

Dakota Marketplace tracked fund presentations across pensions, endowments, foundations, and insurance companies, then matched each one against public investment records for capital raised between 2023 and 2026. Looking at the presentations attached to the very largest raises, the same eight structural choices appeared in every one of them, across five different strategy types.

This is not a formula. The strategies raising the most capital were going to raise billions of dollars because of track record, differentiated strategy, and relationships built over many years. A deck didn't do that work. But among those decks, the structural pattern is consistent enough to be worth naming.

1. The Full Record, Not the Highlights

Performance shown across every fund since inception, including the weak years, placed next to the strong ones rather than around them.

Institutional allocators have seen enough curated performance slides to discount them on sight. Showing the complete history, including the disappointing periods, is what makes the strong periods believable. It signals nothing is being hidden, and that signal tends to matter more to a serious allocator than any single return figure.

2. One Idea, Stated Once, Clearly

A single visual or framework that sums up the firm's identity, rather than a list of adjectives spread across many slides.

Allocators review a large number of these presentations. A firm that can state plainly what it is and isn't, in one place, is doing the reader's work for them. That clarity tends to read as self-knowledge, not marketing polish.

3. Alignment, Stated as a Number

How much of the manager's own capital sits in the fund, how long leadership has stayed in place, and how ownership is structured, stated plainly rather than implied.

Allocators are underwriting people as much as strategies. A firm willing to put a specific number next to its own commitment, rather than a general assurance, is giving the allocator something they can actually verify. That is worth more than the assurance itself.

4. Selectivity, Shown as a Number

How many opportunities were reviewed against how many were actually completed, often broken out by stage.

Nearly every manager claims to be disciplined. Few show the arithmetic behind that claim. Stating the ratio, even an unflattering one, tends to be more convincing than the word "disciplined" on its own.

5. A Thesis, Not Just a Result

An explanation of why the strategy should work now, tied to a specific structural or market condition, placed before the performance numbers.

A track record explains the past. A thesis is the only part of the presentation that addresses what the manager thinks happens next. An allocator underwriting a decade-long commitment needs a case for the future, not only evidence from the past.

6. Named Expertise, Not Anonymous Credentials

Individual biographies for the specific people making decisions, not a general reference to "our experienced team."

For strategies where judgment is the product, the team's specific background functions as part of the diligence file itself, not as a courtesy slide at the back of the deck.

7. Built for the Reader in the Room

A cover page, and often a narrative thread, built around the specific institution being pitched, rather than a generic version sent to everyone.

It signals the meeting was taken seriously enough to prepare for specifically. Across the presentations in this analysis, that was a real and consistent point of differentiation.

8. Risk, Named Specifically

A firm's own loss or default history, stated as a number, often placed next to a public benchmark for direct comparison.

Vague risk language is what a firm reaches for when it doesn't want to commit to a number. A specific comparison only works if the firm is confident in it, and that confidence becomes part of the pitch in a way a hedge never does.

What This Is and Isn't

None of these eight choices require a firm to be large. What they require is a willingness to show the parts of the story that aren't flattering. Among the strategies raising the largest amounts of capital in Dakota's sample, there is a consistent pattern in how much they choose to disclose and how directly they address the parts of their story that aren't flattering.

The data doesn't say transparency will get a fund funded. It says the strategies that got funded at the largest scale were, in this specific respect, unusually transparent. Those are different claims, and the difference matters.

The instinct to over-polish a presentation, to leave out a weak year, to soften the language around risk, tends to work against a firm in front of a sophisticated allocator.

Join Us Tomorrow: The EMG Show

The Emerging Manager Growth Show airs tomorrow, August 19. If you are an emerging manager building your fundraising approach, this is the room to be in. The EMG Show brings together the conversations, data, and practitioner perspective that actually move the needle for managers earlier in the fundraising journey.

Register for the EMG Show here.

Read the Full Report

The full analysis covers how Dakota matched fund presentations against real capital raised, the methodology behind the sample, and the complete breakdown of each structural pattern with anonymized examples from the data.

Read the full report | Book a demo of Dakota Marketplace

In February 2025, Dakota Marketplace held 18,423 individual financial advisor contacts. By August 2026, that number stood at 264,245. That is a 14.3x increase, built in two deliberate waves rather than scraped once and left to decay.

This is the story of how that happened, why the sequencing mattered, and what it means for fundraisers working the FA channel.

The Starting Line

In February 2025, Dakota had a real FA foundation: 18,423 individual FA contacts and 5,659 wirehouse and broker Team accounts. By most measures, a respectable starting point. But the bar was not respectable coverage. For a platform whose differentiator is complete global coverage across every LP channel, a thin FA layer was the most visible gap, and customer feedback made that gap impossible to ignore.

Family offices, RIAs, pensions, endowments, insurance, sovereign funds. Dakota had built depth everywhere else. The individual FA and FA team layer was the remaining frontier.

Two Waves, One Curve

Individual advisor contacts sat essentially flat near 17,000 through Q1 2025. Then the curve broke twice.

April 2025 added 59,082 records. October 2025 added 74,798. Those two months together account for 133,880 records, roughly two-thirds of the entire FA population Dakota holds today.

Between and after those waves, the base kept climbing on a steadier slope: research-driven additions, client requests, and the ordinary churn of an actively maintained channel. By August 2026, the individual FA layer reached 264,245 contacts.

The Team Layer Catches Up

FA Team accounts moved gradually from December 2024 through March 2026, drifting from 5,478 to 7,193. Then, starting in April 2026, the team layer began its own build-out.

From April 2026 through July 2026, team accounts nearly tripled in four months (7,193 to 22,405) before settling into a steadier pace.

The sequencing tells its own story: individuals first, so every advisor is captured and correctly attributed; teams second, so those advisors are properly rolled up into the practice groups they actually work in.

A financial advisor without a correctly linked team record is a lead with no context. Sequencing the individual build first means every team account added from April 2026 onward arrived with its member advisors already resolved.

Where We Stand

Eighteen months of deliberate, sequenced ingestion turned a modest FA presence into one of the largest independently maintained advisor datasets built for fundraisers.

The ratio is worth sitting with: roughly twelve individual advisors for every team account. That tracks with how wirehouse and broker practices are actually structured. Most teams carry several advisors, and Dakota's data now reflects that reality at scale.

Why It Matters

The growth curve is impressive on its own. What makes it strategically meaningful is what it does to Dakota's core differentiators.

No more blind spots. Dakota's LP database spans every channel and jurisdiction by design: family offices, RIAs, pensions, endowments, insurance, sovereign wealth. Fintrx covers US-only RIA/FA. Preqin has near-total absence of advisor depth. That gap in Dakota's coverage is now closed at meaningful scale.

Freshness compounds. A quarter-million records captured once and left static would be a liability. Dakota's daily-update engine is what turns this load into a durable advantage rather than a one-time data dump that decays.

Built by fundraisers, for fundraisers. The sequencing reflects how a practitioner thinks about a territory, not how a data aggregator thinks about a spreadsheet.

The Claude Connector gets sharper. Every query run through the Dakota Marketplace connector now draws on a materially deeper advisor graph: better answers on team composition, coverage gaps, and territory planning, with no extra work required from the user.

Read the Full Report

The full Data Stewardship and Market Signal Review covers the complete ingestion timeline, month-by-month growth charts, and what the FA database build means for each fundraising channel Dakota covers.

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Dakota Marketplace tracked 238 announced RIA acquisition deals worth roughly $451 billion in client AUM across the first seven months of 2026. Most of that volume concentrates on a handful of mega-platforms where manager selection has already moved to home-office approved lists decided above the individual advisor.

The ten platforms below sit one tier down. None of them have locked in an enterprise-wide approved list yet. That is exactly why they are worth prioritizing now rather than after they mature into the next Hightower.

1. Prime Capital Financial

AUM: $50.0B | PE Backer: Carlyle

Prime Capital Financial is a national, advisor-owned hybrid RIA with roughly 180 owners across about 68 offices. Carlyle became its PE backer in August 2026, replacing three-year backer Abry Partners after more than 30 acquisitions took the firm from $2.5 billion to $50 billion in AUM.

A backer change this recent typically means the manager lineup is under fresh review. As the largest platform on this list, Prime Capital is closer to enterprise consolidation than the other nine, which makes the current window shorter, not longer.

2. EP Wealth Advisors

AUM: $42.2B | PE Backers: Berkshire Partners and Ares Management

EP Wealth Advisors is a fee-only RIA roll-up backed by Berkshire Partners since 2020, joined by Ares Management in 2025. The firm made three acquisitions in the Southwest in February 2026 alone and entered the East Coast market in April through its acquisition of Divergent Planning.

EP Wealth has the highest deal volume on this list. Eight-plus acquisitions since taking on PE capital means a steady flow of newly onboarded advisor teams and fresh manager-lineup reviews.

3. Waverly Advisors

AUM: $35.5B | PE Backers: Wealth Partners Capital Group and HGGC

Waverly Advisors is a fee-only roll-up that has completed more than 31 deals since taking capital from Wealth Partners Capital Group and HGGC in 2021. The firm was reportedly pursuing a recapitalization as of July 2026.

Waverly's 31-plus acquisitions make it the most acquisitive platform on this list. A pending recapitalization could bring a new backer and a fresh review of existing manager relationships.

4. Merit Financial Advisors

AUM: $24.0B | PE Backer: Constellation Wealth Capital

Merit Financial Advisors is a hybrid RIA roll-up that swapped Wealth Partners Capital Group and HGGC for Constellation Wealth Capital in 2025. The firm doubled its AUM in a single year through 13 acquisitions.

A backer swap alone does not re-underwrite existing manager lineups the way a full sale would. Merit's newly acquired practices likely still carry their prior manager relationships into the platform.

5. Arax Advisory Partners

AUM: $23.2B | PE Backer: RedBird Capital Partners

Arax Advisory Partners, rebranded from Arax Investment Partners, is backed by RedBird Capital Partners. The firm added Ashton Thomas Private Wealth (roughly $8 billion in AUM) as its seventh deal of 2026, and its CEO has said alternatives are central to the firm's strategy.

Arax is one of two firms on this list most explicit about building out alternatives and family-office capabilities, making it a more likely near-term opening for alts and SMA distribution than the group average.

6. OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners

AUM: $15.0B | PE Backer: Rise Growth Partners

OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners, formerly Bleakley Financial Group, took a minority stake from Rise Growth Partners in 2024. The firm is shifting its advisor base from 1099 to W-2 status while building out six to eight regional hubs.

A minority stake typically leaves existing manager relationships in place. Outreach here should reach the underlying practice rather than wait on a home-office mandate.

7. Modern Wealth Management

AUM: $14.0B | PE Backer: Crestview Partners

Modern Wealth Management launched in April 2023 with $200 million in backing from Crestview Partners and has completed roughly 20 deals in three years. Per Dakota's Q2 2026 RIA M&A Report, the firm is still exploring a recapitalization.

At roughly 20 deals in three years, Modern Wealth is one of the newer entrants on this list. A recapitalization could reset how the platform approaches manager selection.

8. Mission Wealth

AUM: $10.6B | PE Backer: Great Hill Partners

Mission Wealth is a high-net-worth planning firm, majority employee-owned, with more than 35 offices. The firm took a minority investment from Great Hill Partners in 2025. Recent acquisitions include Diversified Asset Management and FRG Family Wealth Advisors.

As with the other minority-stake platforms on this list, Mission Wealth's acquired practices likely retain their existing manager relationships rather than being re-underwritten against a new approved list.

9. Apella Wealth

AUM: $10.5B | PE Backers: Wealth Partners Capital Group and HGGC

Apella Wealth is an evidence-based RIA founded in 2014 and built around factor-based investing. Its most recent acquisition was the firm's 27th overall and 16th since Wealth Partners Capital Group and HGGC took a stake in 2021, a pace of roughly two deals a month.

Apella's factor-based, passive-leaning approach makes it a harder fit for higher-fee active strategies than most platforms on this list.

10. MCF Advisors

AUM: $4.7B | PE Backers: Wealth Partners Capital Group and HGGC

MCF Advisors is a fee-based RIA roll-up that took Wealth Partners Capital Group and HGGC's Aspire Holdings minority stake in March 2025. The firm has completed three deals since, most recently in April 2026.

As the smallest platform on this list, MCF is the clearest example of the thesis behind this ranking: a firm still adding practices at a steady clip that could look very different in two years.

What This Tier Means for Fundraisers

Three dynamics define this group.

First, PE backer turnover is high. Three of the ten changed or added a backer in the past year: Prime Capital (Carlyle in, Abry out), Merit (Constellation in, Wealth Partners Capital Group and HGGC out), and EP Wealth (Ares added alongside Berkshire). All three were minority investments rather than full sales. A minority stake leaves existing manager relationships in place; a full sale re-underwrites the target against the acquirer's approved list.

Second, one sponsor can span several platforms. Wealth Partners Capital Group and HGGC back Waverly, Apella, and MCF simultaneously, and took a $3.3 billion stake in Crewe Advisors this same quarter. A relationship at one platform does not translate automatically to the others.

Third, manager relationships at most of these firms remain decentralized. Acquired practices tend to carry their existing manager relationships into the new platform. Reaching the underlying practice directly is more effective than waiting on a home-office mandate that may not exist yet.

Dakota Marketplace tracks RIA aggregator accounts and verified contacts across the home office and advisor-team level, including every platform covered here. Filter by PE backer, AUM, recent acquisition activity, and custodian or alternative platform access.

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The Khosla family agreed to acquire the Seattle Seahawks for $9.612 billion on July 11, 2026, pending NFL owner approval on August 26. At 15.0x the franchise's estimated $640 million in revenue, the deal sets a new multiple record for a major U.S. sports franchise, surpassing the 13.4x benchmark set by the Arctos Partners-backed Cleveland Browns transaction.

Paul Allen paid $194 million for the Seahawks in 1997. The sale represents a 49.5x return on that original investment, roughly a 14% annualized gain over 29 years.

The Multiple That Matters

Sports franchise valuations are quoted in dollars but priced by revenue multiple. The $9.612 billion figure is significant. The 15.0x revenue multiple is the number that will define future deal benchmarks.

For comparison: the Arctos Partners-backed Cleveland Browns transaction cleared at 13.4x. The New England Patriots sold in 2023 at approximately 9x revenue. Each successive deal has reset the ceiling.

The Seahawks' Super Bowl LX appearance drew 125 million viewers, contributing to the revenue base and valuation rationale. A franchise with a recent championship showing and a new stadium on the horizon commands premium multiples from buyers who view the asset as appreciating over a 10-plus year horizon.

The PE Consortium Behind the Deal

The Khosla family, led by Vinod Khosla, is structuring the acquisition with a financing consortium that reportedly includes Sixth Street Partners, Carlyle, and Dynasty Equity, though those names have not been formally confirmed. NFL rules permit passive institutional equity ownership up to 30% of a franchise, a policy the league opened to private capital in 2022.

As part of the deal, Vinod Khosla will be required to divest his existing minority stake in the San Francisco 49ers. NFL ownership rules prohibit controlling or significant minority ownership in two franchises simultaneously.

What the Deal Means for Sports Capital Markets

Three dynamics are worth tracking for fundraisers and allocators with sports-adjacent mandates.

First, the NFL-approved PE firm list now has a transaction at the top of the market. Arctos Partners, Sixth Street Partners, Carlyle, and Dynasty Equity are accumulating track record across a compressed window. Allocators evaluating sports exposure should be watching which firms are building the longest position history in league-sanctioned vehicles.

Second, the revenue multiple expansion from 9x to 15x in under four years is not indefinitely repeatable. The capital entering the asset class is compressing the arbitrage that early movers captured. The Los Angeles Lakers, valued at similar revenue multiples in the NBA context, have already drawn institutional interest as a benchmark. The question is whether the next generation of buyers can generate returns at 15x entry that the prior generation achieved at 9x.

Third, the capital stack structure matters more than the headline number. Stadium financing, preferred LP positions, and revenue-backed instruments are the entry points for most institutional capital, not direct equity ownership. The Seahawks transaction will likely involve structured instruments below the Khosla family equity that carry different risk and return profiles than the 49.5x headline implies.

Risks and Outstanding Questions

NFL owner approval is scheduled for August 26. The vote is considered procedural in most completed transactions but remains a formal step. Financing details for the institutional consortium have not been disclosed. The final structure of any PE participation, including whether Sixth Street Partners, Carlyle, or Dynasty Equity take equity or preferred positions, has not been confirmed.

Read the Full Analysis

Dakota's July 2026 Sports Investing Report covers this transaction alongside the Rogers Communications buyout of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Apollo's Yankees financing discussions, and the repeating capital structure appearing across Real Madrid, stadium deals, and lower-league expansion. Available inside Dakota Marketplace.

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I’ll say this upfront: given the choice, I will take a warm referral over a cold email every single time. A referral carries trust that no subject line can manufacture. If you have a relationship that can open a door, use it.

But here’s the reality of raising capital in 2026. This is a brutally competitive market. There are more strategies chasing the same allocators than ever before, and if you have a good product, sitting back and waiting for a referral to materialize is not a strategy. It’s a hope. If you believe in what you’re raising, you have an obligation to get the word out. And for most of us, most of the time, that means cold email.

Cold Email Doesn’t Have to Feel Cold

The hack, and my kids would absolutely call it a hack, is simple: do the homework before you write the email.

Before you reach out to a due diligence analyst, find out something real about them. Have they been on a podcast? Written an article? Published a book? Spend twenty minutes with that content and reference it specifically in your outreach. That one move signals you didn’t blast a list. You looked at them. It’s the difference between a form letter and a conversation starter.

Pair that with intent. You’re not emailing into the void, you’re emailing because you’re going to be in their city. “I’ll be in Boston the week of the 14th” does something a generic meeting request never will. It gives the analyst a real, low-friction reason to say yes.

Operationally, we build our outreach around city scheduling. At any given time we’re actively working five cities, sending 20 to 25 personalized cold emails a day. That volume combined with real personalization is what makes the system work.

The Part Most People Miss

Due diligence analysts are almost without exception hunting for new and interesting ideas. That’s the job. And nearly all of them run their inbox the same way: Outlook, with folders organized by asset class. Private credit here. Real estate there. Infrastructure over there.

So if your email’s first sentence or two makes it immediately clear who you are, what you do, and why it matters, even if the analyst has zero interest in meeting you this week, a huge percentage of them will do one small, quiet thing: drag your email into the private credit folder and file it away for later.

That’s not a rejection. That’s a placement.

You didn’t get a meeting today. But you got something more durable. You got filed into the exact folder that analyst opens every time they’re building a manager list, doing a search, or fielding a question from their investment committee. You’re now sitting in their private reference library, organized by category, waiting for the moment your strategy becomes relevant.

One Meeting at a Time. One Folder at a Time.

When you send 20 to 25 well-researched emails and only get one or two meetings out of it, you haven’t failed at a 92% clip. You’ve spent the day quietly building your presence inside dozens of private credit, real estate, and infrastructure folders across the country.

Cold email isn’t a numbers game. Done with real research and real clarity, it’s a distribution strategy. One meeting at a time. One folder at a time. One analyst at a time.

Written by Gui Costin, CEO and Founder, Dakota

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Dakota tracked 1,092 private capital transactions in July 2026, representing $189.2 billion in disclosed value, in addition to a meaningful number of transactions with undisclosed terms. Fundraising was active across private equity, infrastructure, and private credit. Industrials and healthcare led M&A by disclosed deal value.

Private Equity: Francisco Partners Sets the Pace

Francisco Partners’ $21.0 billion combined close led an active month for buyout fundraising. Several other established managers closed funds above target or on accelerated timelines, reflecting sustained LP appetite for private equity despite a higher-rate environment.

Private Credit: Hayfin’s Direct Lending Close

Hayfin’s latest direct lending fund represented one of July’s largest closes in the credit category. Institutional demand for income-oriented strategies remains strong, and direct lending continues to attract capital from allocators seeking current yield with downside protection.

Infrastructure: Energy Transition Draws Capital

Energy Capital Partners and Partners Group posted large closes, highlighting continued LP appetite for energy transition assets, essential infrastructure, and inflation-sensitive strategies. Infrastructure’s resilience as an asset class is drawing commitments from pension funds and sovereign wealth allocators seeking long-duration exposure.

M&A: Industrials and Healthcare Lead by Value

Industrials ranked first and healthcare second by disclosed deal value in July, anchored by large strategic acquisitions. Together the two sectors represented a substantial share of the month’s disclosed M&A activity, with both sponsors and strategic buyers remaining active through the summer.

Read the Full Report

The full July 2026 Private Funds Summary covers all 1,092 transactions, top fund closes by strategy, M&A breakdowns by sector, and fundraising trends across private equity, credit, infrastructure, and real assets. Available inside Dakota Marketplace.

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Dakota tracked 1,092 private capital transactions in July 2026, representing $189.2 billion in disclosed value, in addition to a meaningful number of transactions with undisclosed terms. Fundraising was active across private equity, infrastructure, and private credit. Industrials and healthcare led M&A by disclosed deal value.

Private Equity: Francisco Partners Sets the Pace

Francisco Partners’ $21.0 billion combined close led an active month for buyout fundraising. Several other established managers closed funds above target or on accelerated timelines, reflecting sustained LP appetite for private equity despite a higher-rate environment.

Private Credit: Hayfin’s Direct Lending Close

Hayfin’s latest direct lending fund represented one of July’s largest closes in the credit category. Institutional demand for income-oriented strategies remains strong, and direct lending continues to attract capital from allocators seeking current yield with downside protection.

Infrastructure: Energy Transition Draws Capital

Energy Capital Partners and Partners Group posted large closes, highlighting continued LP appetite for energy transition assets, essential infrastructure, and inflation-sensitive strategies. Infrastructure’s resilience as an asset class is drawing commitments from pension funds and sovereign wealth allocators seeking long-duration exposure.

M&A: Industrials and Healthcare Lead by Value

Industrials ranked first and healthcare second by disclosed deal value in July, anchored by large strategic acquisitions. Together the two sectors represented a substantial share of the month’s disclosed M&A activity, with both sponsors and strategic buyers remaining active through the summer.

Read the Full Report

The full July 2026 Private Funds Summary covers all 1,092 transactions, top fund closes by strategy, M&A breakdowns by sector, and fundraising trends across private equity, credit, infrastructure, and real assets. Available inside Dakota Marketplace.

Read the full report | Book a demo of Dakota Marketplace

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