The S-1 to price AI: Anthropic’s soon-to-be-disclosed gross margin won’t just price its own IPO. It will recalibrate OpenAI’s eventual offering, as well as the entire sector. Read more.
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A MESSAGE FROM ARCESIUM
How are leading firms navigating private credit’s growing complexities?
As private credit opportunities grow, so do their complexities. While some managers are consolidating their strategies, others are diversifying. And between rising competition, shifting risk dynamics, and increasing investor scrutiny, the pressure for performance, discipline, and transparency has never been higher.
With the latest insights from private credit managers and allocators, this whitepaper explores how firms are navigating this environment. Readers will learn:
The key growth drivers and stress factors influencing private credit today
How managers are approaching consolidation versus diversification
Where risk, competition, and dispersion are creating new challenges
Why operational discipline and transparency are becoming critical
How data, technology, and infrastructure are supporting scale and control
Private equity just told us its top priority for the next six months is selling. In the same survey, more respondents expect exit conditions to get worse than to improve, and the largest group expects no change at all.
This is a difficult situation for an industry dominating the headlines for its inability to monetize the $2.7 trillion in NAV of PE-backed assets in the US alone, much of it bought at the top of the 2020–2021 cycle. And the buyers aren’t there to clear it; the IPO window is shut for most of the market, and even a record M&A quarter concentrated on larger deals and skipped over the middle-market companies that sponsors most need to sell.
That contradiction sits on top of the industry’s other fixation: AI. Asked which macro forces most shape their decisions today, practitioners now rank AI with the same level of importance as interest rates and geopolitics. As reported by PitchBook, Partners Group’s Steffen Meister said the next decade will bring an economic transformation driven by the “reconfiguration” of what had been winning business models.
According to our survey, capital allocation trends reinforce this view: The sector PE is trimming most aggressively is software, the engine behind a decade of sponsor returns. Lenders are also pulling back from the same sector, according to PitchBook-LCD’s Q2 2026 Global Private Credit Survey.
On the flip side, energy and business services are the sectors where PE practitioners are adding to their portfolios most aggressively, with tailwinds supported by the physical infrastructure of AI, data centers, and the associated construction and power needs.
This behavior is consistent with an industry caught between its future and its past—one where GPs want to move the conversation on to AI, while LPs want their capital back, forcing GPs to find creative ways to manufacture distributions. Until that tension can be resolved, the industry will struggle to fund the AI bets that participants hope will usher in a new golden era of private equity.
Download the Q2 US PE Survey for our outlook on which force will win through the back half of 2026. The report also explores what would actually reopen the exit market, where the industry lands on continuation funds, and the single biggest impediment to AI adoption in portfolio companies.
Analysts to consumer companies on AI: ‘Prove it’s working’
Public markets are no longer satisfied by the mention of AI on consumer software earnings calls. Equity research analysts increasingly want evidence of revenue attribution, margin expansion and customer retention.
Across 186 AI-related questions posed by equity research analysts covering B2C names—Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Spotify, DoorDash, Duolingo, Instacart and others—from Q4 2022 through Q4 2025, the posture shifted from “What’s the AI strategy?” to “Prove it,” according to PitchBook’s recent report.
The predominant tone is investigative. Approximately 90% of questions were probing or skeptical, signaling that the market presumes AI strategies exist and is determining if leadership can execute against them.
The topic mix underscores this evolution. Questions on competition, partnership, product specifics, and AI financials and ROI are all climbing as investors press for revenue attribution over narrative momentum.
And the focus is increasing on both sides of the call. Aggregate AI mentions from company leadership grew from fewer than 150 across the sample in Q4 2022 to more than 500 in Q4 2025, with the median company’s count tripling.
Fortunately, product-market-fit tailwinds are material. Generative AI app downloads approached 4 billion in 2025, and in-app purchase revenue reached $5 billion. But exit pathways for B2C platforms are narrow, and staying private longer means venture-backed consumer companies get benchmarked against public incumbents before listing.
