|
|
   |
| The Daily Pitch |
| PE, VC and M&A |
| Your edge on global private capital markets |
| |
|
|
|
| Good morning. In today's Daily Pitch, we break down VC's shortcomings for performance, a win for female founders and insights from our 2025 Annual US PE Breakdown, sponsored by CohnReznick. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| PE deal value tops $1 trillion for only the second time |
|
By Madeline Shi and Janelle Bradley, PitchBook News
PE dealmaking in the US hit full stride in 2025, shaking off some early-year hiccups to notch the second-highest annual deal value on record. But the rebound was overwhelmingly driven by the comeback of plus-size transactions.
PE firms recorded more than 9,000 deals last year. The total value of those transactions reached $1.2 trillion, making 2025 only the second year in which funding surpassed the $1 trillion mark, according to our latest US PE Breakdown.
That figure was just shy of the $1.3 trillion industry record set in 2021.
Mega-deals, defined as those worth $1 billion or more, were the primary driver of the growth. PE firms struck nearly $570 billion worth of such transactions during the year, accounting for about 52% of total deal value—the highest share ever. |
|
Dealmakers gravitated toward large transactions, particularly take-privates, as improved financing conditions, the prospect of lower interest rates and attractive public-market valuations created incentives to deploy capital.
The $55 billion take-private acquisition of video game developer Electronic Arts was the largest buyout inked last year—and the largest PE deal ever recorded.
Other supersized transactions included Blackstone and TPG's $18.3 billion takeover of medical diagnostics firm Hologic, as well as Clayton, Dubilier & Rice's $10.3 billion purchase of packaging company Sealed Air.
Exit activity saw a similar concentration of large deals. PE exits totaled $738 billion last year, with mega-sized exits representing 78% of the total value, well above the five-year average of 57%. |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| A message from Oracle NetSuite |
|
|
| 2026 CFO Agenda: 12 ways to flourish now |
|
With an unpredictable year ahead, CFOs need to stay on the lookout for fresh ideas. NetSuite compiled a dozen action items that finance experts suggest CFOs should add to their 2026 agenda to achieve their goals.
Download your annual CFO Agenda today to learn how to control costs, drive operational excellence, and extract strategic insights throughout 2026–and beyond! |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
• 2025 was the best funding year by far for US-based female founders. Startups with at least one female founder raised over $127 billion across 3,075 deals—an 85% increase over the previous record of $68.6 billion set in 2021, according to our female founders dashboard.
• As part of a $7.1 billion fundraise, Ares Management's $4 billion credit secondaries vehicle is one of the largest of its kind on the market right now. Read more
• Coller Capital has closed its latest global PE secondaries fund on its $12.5 billion hard cap, raising a total of $17 billion for its secondaries platform in the latest fundraising cycle. Read more |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| Adding VC to a portfolio is not a guaranteed performance booster |
|
By Kaidi Gao, Senior VC Analyst
Venture capital's benefits to allocators are not all they've been cracked up to be, according to new research from PitchBook.
The implications are significant, as allocators—particularly university endowments and public pensions—have increasingly shifted capital away from public equities and toward private strategies over the past two decades, often citing VC's perceived ability to generate alpha and improve diversification.
Over the long run, and accounting for volatility, correlation and liquidity constraints, PitchBook finds that aggregate VC returns have been middle of the pack within private market strategies. Periods of strong relative performance, including the post-global financial crisis era and during the COVID-19 pandemic, coincided with favorable macroeconomic conditions, strong public equity returns and robust IPO markets. Outside those environments, VC performance has been more uneven.
Risk characteristics further complicate the picture. After adjusting for appraisal-based valuation smoothing, VC exhibits among the highest estimated volatilities among the public and private asset classes analyzed. |
|
VC's correlation with public growth equities has also remained elevated in recent years, limiting diversification benefits. Liquidity remains a structural constraint, with VC distributions slower and more volatile than those of other private market strategies, particularly since the 2021 exit peak.
To assess portfolio-level impact, PitchBook modeled a traditional 60/40 portfolio with a 20% VC allocation and compared it with an otherwise identical portfolio allocating to public growth equities instead. The result: VC-allocated portfolios on average produced lower returns and higher volatility across multiple time horizons. However, outcomes varied widely across simulations, underscoring the importance of manager selection. Even modest selection skill—or avoiding persistent underperformers—meaningfully improved results.
VC can contribute positively under the right conditions, but success depends on disciplined portfolio construction, careful manager selection, and realistic expectations around risk, liquidity and return dispersion rather than reliance on headline returns alone. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Smart reads that caught our eye.
• Longtime Silicon Valley investor Michael Moritz predicts that California's billionaire wealth tax will backfire, but that those with deep pockets will be fine. [Financial Times]
• Among the Trump administration's justifications for its tariffs, one has remained central: that tariffs will inspire a revival in US manufacturing. But are they hurting the factories they were meant to protect? [The Economist]
• President Donald Trump's proposed 10% credit card rate cap has banks ready to fight back. [CNBC] |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| | | |
