Private equity (PE) funds were holding about 32,000 companies they had not yet sold, with a combined value of $3.8 trillion, according to Bain & Company’s Global Private Equity Report 2026. The figures appear in the report’s overview chapter, “Private Equity Outlook 2026: Gaining Traction”, which Bain’s website dates 22 February 2026. Bain writes that deal and exit values in 2025 were the second highest on record, driven by a small number of very large transactions, while the cash PE funds returned to their investors stayed low.

The unsold stock and holding periods

Bain counts roughly 32,000 companies in the stock of unrealized PE assets, worth $3.8 trillion, based on PitchBook and Preqin data; the 2025 value is as of the second quarter. For buyout funds, the average holding period at exit is around seven years, Bain says, up from an average of five to six years between 2010 and 2021. Almost 40 percent of companies have been held for more than five years, compared with 29 percent in 2019.

Bain also reports an analysis of buyout funds that started investing between 2000 and 2015. It finds that the internal rate of return (IRR), a measure of annual returns, begins to level off around year seven and declines after that.

Payouts to investors

Distributions to limited partners (LPs), the pension funds, endowments and other investors in PE funds, were about 14 percent of net asset value (NAV) in the 12 months to the third quarter of 2025, according to MSCI data cited by Bain. The ratio has been below 15 percent for four years in a row, which Bain calls a record for the industry, and it was last at this level during the 2008-09 financial crisis, the report says.

Continuation vehicles, which let a fund return cash to its investors while the PE firm keeps control of a company, accounted for less than 10 percent of PE exit value, according to Bain. The value of such vehicles led by general partners (GPs), the firms that manage PE funds, grew 62 percent in 2025.

Private capital funds of all kinds raised $1.3 trillion in 2025, about the same as in 2024, while buyout fundraising fell 16 percent to $395 billion, Bain reports. The number of funds closed fell 18 percent across the industry and 23 percent for buyout.

Deals and exits in 2025

Global buyout investment rose 44 percent from 2024 to $904 billion, while the number of deals fell 6 percent to 3,018, according to Dealogic data cited by Bain. The average disclosed deal size reached a record $1.2 billion. Bain says 13 deals of $10 billion or more accounted for $274 billion of the global increase, and 11 of them were in the US. The largest was the $56.6 billion take-private of Electronic Arts, which Bain lists as the largest buyout on record.

Buyout-backed exit value rose 47 percent to $717 billion, while the number of exits fell 2 percent to 1,570. Seven exits of more than $10 billion each made up $155 billion, or 22 percent, of exit value. Bain names Macquarie’s $40 billion sale of Aligned Data Centers among them. Initial public offerings (IPOs) remained a small exit route, according to the report, which cites the $7.2 billion Medline listing in December 2025 as the largest PE-backed IPO on record.

Global dry powder, money committed to funds but not yet invested, stands at $1.3 trillion, Bain says, citing Preqin data as of the second quarter of 2025. Most of it was raised by funds that began investing in 2022 and 2023.

Sources and notes

The source is Bain & Company’s Private Equity Outlook 2026: Gaining Traction, the overview chapter of its Global Private Equity Report 2026, read in full on Bain’s website; other chapters of the report were not read. The page’s byline and metadata give a publication date of 22 February 2026. The authors are Hugh MacArthur, Rebecca Burack, Graham Rose, Alexander Schmitz, Kiki Yang and Sebastien Lamy. Bain draws on Dealogic, PitchBook, Preqin and MSCI data, which Lens did not check directly. Bain’s buyout investment figures exclude add-on acquisitions, and its deal and exit values count only transactions with disclosed values, so totals may differ from other trackers. The body text calls the $1.3 trillion “global dry powder”, while the notes to the matching chart describe buyout fund categories; the report does not say whether the two scopes differ. The 22 percent share is Bain’s figure and matches $155 billion out of $717 billion (Lens arithmetic). Thumbnail photo: “Ransomes Industrial Estate in Ipswich - aerial view - Flickr - John D Fielding” by John Fielding (John D Fielding on Flickr) via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0; cropped. An aerial view of factories, warehouses and business units on the Ransomes industrial estate in Ipswich, England. Stand-in photo; it does not show the events or organisations described.

Image: Lens chart built from the figures above. Thumbnail: John Fielding (John D Fielding on Flickr) via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).