Private Equity’s Growing Power

Private equity has become a huge part of the financial world. Firms like Blackstone, KKR, Apollo, and TPG manage hundreds of billions of dollars and invest in companies across almost every industry. What I found interesting when looking into the private equity market right now is that the industry is growing, but the money isn’t necessarily being spread around. More and more of it is going toward the biggest firms and the biggest deals.

In the first half of 2026, U.S. private equity firms invested around $545 billion, according to KPMG1. That sounds like a massive amount of activity, but there is another side to the number. The total number of deals actually went down.2 Basically, private equity firms are putting more money into fewer companies. Large deals are making up a bigger part of the market, which gives the biggest firms an advantage over smaller competitors.

Fundraising shows a similar trend. S&P Global reported that private equity fundraising fell to about $491 billion globally in 20253. Fundraising has picked up in 2026, with more than $306 billion raised by the end of June4, but most of that money is going to established firms with strong track records. Smaller firms are having a harder time convincing investors to give them money when they can instead put it with a major firm that has been around for decades.

There is another problem for private equity firms: getting out of their investments. The basic idea behind private equity is pretty simple. A firm buys a company, tries to make it more valuable, and eventually sells it for a profit. The problem is that selling has become more difficult. Higher interest rates and disagreements over how much companies are worth have made buyers and sellers less willing to make deals. According to EY, U.S. private equity exit activity remained under pressure in the first half of 20265.

That creates an interesting situation. Private equity firms have an enormous amount of money to invest, but they can’t always easily sell the companies they already own. This means some firms are holding investments for longer than they originally planned. For investors in those funds, that can mean waiting longer to get their money back.

I don’t think this means private equity is necessarily becoming a problem. Private equity can give companies access to capital and help businesses that need new management or a different strategy. But the industry’s growing size does raise some questions. If a smaller number of massive firms control an increasing amount of capital, they can have a much bigger influence over the companies and industries they invest in.

For now, private equity is still growing, but the growth isn’t happening equally across the industry. The biggest firms are getting bigger, while smaller firms are fighting for a smaller share of the market. That may be one of the most important trends to watch in private equity over the next few years.