The private-equity secondaries market quietly set its all-time record in 2025, with global transaction volume reaching $240 billion — a 48% jump from 2024 and the largest year ever recorded, according to the Jefferies 2025 Global Secondary Market Review published February 10, 2026. The H2 2025 stretch alone produced $137 billion of deals, more than the entire annual market just three years earlier.
The headline number masks a structural shift. Limited-partner (LP) portfolio sales — the original use case for secondaries — were $125 billion (52% of the market). General-partner (GP) led deals, where a sponsor moves trophy assets out of an aging fund and into a new vehicle, hit $115 billion, up 53% year-over-year. GP-led volume has now nearly caught LP-led for the first time, and the average continuation-vehicle ticket was about $900 million.
Why GP-Led Is the Story
Traditional private equity exits — IPOs and strategic sales — have been muted for three years. Sponsors needed a way to return capital to limited partners without firesale-ing their best companies. The continuation vehicle (CV) became that escape valve: the GP raises a fresh fund, that fund buys one or more assets out of the old fund at a negotiated price, existing LPs choose between cashing out or rolling into the new vehicle, and a syndicate of secondary buyers (Blackstone Strategic Partners, Ardian, Lexington, Goldman Sachs Vintage, HarbourVest) provides the equity.
What was once a niche workaround is now table stakes. Jefferies estimates roughly 80% of the top-100 PE sponsors have completed at least one continuation deal. In 2025, 29 GP-led deals priced at over $1 billion — more billion-dollar CVs than the entire market did in 2018.
The Numbers, In One Place
| 2025 Secondary Market | Volume | YoY | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total market | $240B | +48% | 100% |
| LP-led portfolio sales | $125B | +44% | 52% |
| GP-led / continuation vehicles | $115B | +53% | 48% |
| H2 2025 alone | $137B | — | 57% |
| Billion-dollar GP-led deals | 29 | — | — |
| Avg. continuation vehicle size | ~$900M | — | — |
Pricing Is Bifurcating by Strategy
Average LP portfolio pricing fell to 87% of net asset value (NAV) in 2025, a 200 basis-point decline from 2024 as more sellers entered the market. But the headline number hides a wide dispersion that tells you where the institutional demand actually sits.
Buyout stakes are clearing at 92% of NAV, credit at 91% — both essentially where they were before 2022’s rate shock. Venture and growth-equity stakes, marked at the peak of the 2021 bubble, are still trading at 78% of NAV. Real-estate funds are the cheapest at 70%, reflecting unresolved questions on office valuations and cap rates. That bifurcation is why every major secondary buyer is now strategy-segmented: Strategic Partners has dedicated PE, infrastructure, real-estate, and (most recently) credit funds.
Supply Side: Mega-Funds Have the Capital
Secondary buyers now sit on $327 billion of dedicated dry powder, up 14% from year-end 2024 (Jefferies), with another ~$150 billion of evergreen-vehicle capital that can rotate into the asset class. The supply side is concentrating fast: the top-10 buyers transact roughly half of all secondary volume.
Blackstone Strategic Partners crossed $91 billion of investor capital when it closed Strategic Partners Infrastructure IV at $5.5 billion on September 2, 2025, then crossed $100 billion of AUM in early 2026. Its flagship Strategic Partners Fund X targets $22 billion. Ardian, the largest dedicated secondary platform, manages roughly $200 billion across alternatives and is in the market for a record-sized secondaries fund. Lexington, HarbourVest, and Goldman Sachs Vintage round out the top tier.
The Latest Signal: CPPIB’s C$4B Block Sale
On May 20, 2026, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) completed the sale of 33 limited-partnership fund interests accumulated over roughly 20 years, for net proceeds of approximately C$4 billion, with Blackstone Strategic Partners and Ardian as the buyers. The release confirmed Blackstone Strategic Partners at US$100 billion AUM and Ardian at US$200 billion. CPPIB’s head of secondaries Tom Kapsimalis framed the sale as “an attractive opportunity to optimize our exposure” — corporate-speak for the right time to take liquidity at fair pricing.
The CPPIB transaction is the type of trade that defines the new market: a sophisticated public pension actively grooming its private-equity book, two specialist buyers writing a check that would have been unfathomable a decade ago, and a discount narrow enough that the seller would do it again. Expect more.
2026 Outlook: $300B Within 24 Months
Jefferies projects more than $100 billion of secondaries volume in the first half of 2026 alone, with the market on a trajectory to approach $300 billion in annual volume within the next 12–24 months. The drivers are mechanical: distributions from buyout funds remain below the 20-year average, large allocators continue to use secondaries to fund new commitments, and continuation vehicles are now the default exit path for sponsors who would rather not sell their best assets at a discount in a closed IPO window.
What used to be the plumbing of private markets has become a primary venue. For LPs, that means real liquidity from positions that used to be locked up for the full fund life. For GPs, it means an exit option that doesn’t require the IPO calendar to cooperate. For the buyers — Blackstone, Ardian, Lexington, HarbourVest, Goldman Vintage — it means a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity set and an ever-tighter oligopoly at the top.
Sources
- Jefferies, 2025 Global Secondary Market Review (published February 10, 2026)
- Blackstone Strategic Partners Infrastructure IV final close press release (September 2, 2025)
- CPP Investments, completion of C$4B private-equity fund-interest sale (May 20, 2026)
- Secondaries Investor — Blackstone targets $22B for Strategic Partners Fund X
Disclosure: This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed before publication. It is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice.