As of June 30, private-equity firms held roughly 13,500 U.S. companies in their portfolios, per PitchBook — up from about 13,300 at the end of 2025. The direction matters more than the level: the pile is growing. A PwC analysis puts the math bluntly — at the current pace of exits, clearing that inventory would take about nine years. Almost 4,000 of those companies have been held six years or more, and roughly 1,500 have been held nine-plus years. Private equity’s pitch has always been “buy, improve, sell in three to five years.” A nine-year holding isn’t a strategy. It’s a car that won’t start.
And yet the money keeps arriving: $159.6 billion of fresh fundraising in the first half, on pace to match last year’s $308 billion. Capital is flowing in the front door faster than companies are leaving through the back.
The stickiest part of the jam is the vintage everyone overpaid for. Only about 1,200 of those 13,500 companies are software firms, but they tie up an outsized share of the capital, because so many were bought at 2020–21 valuations — the stretch insiders now grimly call the “SaaS-Pocalypse.” As Darius Craton of Raymond James put it: “The 2021 assets are probably the hardest ones to exit right now… There’s a wall of stuff that’s kind of building up.”
To be fair, there is a bright spot: 16 PE-backed IPOs raised $10.1 billion in the first half — the best stretch since the end of 2021, per Preqin — including Bending Spoons, which raised $1.68 billion and jumped 40% on debut. But sixteen exits against thirteen and a half thousand holdings is a drainpipe on a reservoir.
Two weeks ago we wrote about private-credit funds gating redemptions: investors asked for $15.6 billion back and got $5.9 billion. Same building, different floor. The new “evergreen” and “interval” funds being marketed to retail investors — increasingly inside retirement accounts — are the industry’s answer to the exit jam: if the assets can’t leave, recruit owners who can’t either. An interval fund is the same illiquid building with a nicer lobby. The quarterly redemption window is a doggy door, and it closes exactly when the crowd shows up. Our private-credit gates piece walks through the mechanics.
First, ask the only question that matters about any private wrapper: who buys it back, and when? If the answer involves a queue, a board’s discretion, or the phrase “up to 5% per quarter,” that is not money you can retire on-schedule with. Second, match liquidity to purpose. Private stakes may suit money you truly won’t touch for a decade; they do not suit the accounts funding next year’s withdrawals. Our income sleeves stay in things with a live public bid — dividend payers, index funds, short Treasuries earning 4%-plus — because a retiree’s sell button has to work every single day. Third, be skeptical of solutions that arrive exactly when the industry needs buyers. The backlog is Wall Street’s problem. The wrappers are how it becomes yours.