Private market secondaries are continuing to defy the broader fundraising slowdown.
Even as exits remain constrained and IPO windows stay choppy, capital is still flowing into secondaries vehicles, a strategy increasingly used by limited partners seeking liquidity and by buyers looking for exposure with a perceived lower-risk profile than fresh buyout investments. The backdrop is a distribution desert: JPMorgan said global secondaries transaction volumes reached a record $226 billion in 2025, up 41% from 2024, as a slower IPO market kept assets private for longer and pushed investors toward secondary sales as an alternative liquidity path.
That momentum has carried into 2026. Secondaries Investor reported that secondaries funds raised nearly $39 billion in the first quarter, while Alternatives Watch said GPs across private equity, credit, real estate and venture raised $244 billion in Q1, with secondaries accounting for $50 billion. In a separate sign of appetite for the strategy, Partners Group said it raised more than $9 billion for its eighth private equity secondaries program, highlighting the scale that top managers can still command from institutional allocators.
The appeal is straightforward. For LPs, secondaries offer a way to rebalance portfolios, free up cash and reduce exposure to older vintages after years of muted distributions. Foley & Lardner said constrained capital conditions and weak exit markets are keeping pressure on private equity portfolios, while PitchBook has noted that deal drought and liquidity concerns are nudging some managers toward credit and secondaries. In the middle market, industry coverage has also pointed to growing interest in GP-led transactions, which allow sponsors to extend ownership of attractive assets while giving existing investors a liquidity option.
AI is not causing that fundraising strength, but it is beginning to shape how the market works.
Secondaries depend on making sense of fragmented, private data: fund documents, portfolio company materials, valuation histories, LP positions, transaction comparables and governance terms. That is where AI is becoming more relevant. In the research set, PEI archive themes describe how machine learning is reshaping secondaries by speeding up deal screening, valuation support and liquidity planning. Commercial diligence providers such as Woozle Research and DiligenceVault have similarly argued that AI can help with the mechanical parts of diligence — document review, transcript synthesis, pattern detection and data aggregation — while leaving final judgment to humans.
For buyers, that matters because pricing in secondaries is all about imperfect information. AI tools can help consolidate large data sets, flag inconsistencies and surface missing information earlier in the process, which is especially useful in older fund vintages, continuation vehicles and software-heavy portfolios where value can move quickly. Moonfare has said NAV lending and continuation vehicles are part of the same liquidity toolkit, reinforcing the idea that secondaries are increasingly tied to broader portfolio management rather than one-off trades.
The technology is also starting to matter on the LP side. Institutional investors are under pressure to manage pacing, concentration and liquidity across increasingly complex private-markets books. AI systems that support portfolio analytics can help investors decide when to hold, when to sell and how to structure liquidity solutions, potentially making secondary sales easier to plan rather than purely reactive.
That does not mean the market has become less human. Governance, transparency and explainability remain central concerns, especially as buyers lean on automated systems to support valuation and underwriting. Regulators and consultants in the research pack warn that asset managers still need to identify and manage AI-related risks, rather than simply scale the tools without oversight.
Still, the direction of travel is clear. Secondaries have moved from a niche liquidity trade to an increasingly institutionalized part of private markets. Large fundraising rounds, record transaction volumes and persistent LP demand suggest the strategy is becoming a core allocation for many investors. AI, meanwhile, is emerging as the operating layer that helps the market process more data, price liquidity more efficiently and move faster in a market where exits remain scarce.
