Private credit gains ground among top private equity managers - S&P Global

Private credit has emerged as the dominant growth driver for major alternative asset managers, fundamentally reshaping portfolio composition across the industry's leading firms. Preqin projects that global private credit AUM will expand nearly 98% from $2.280 trillion in 2025 to $4.504 trillion by 2030, indicating sustained institutional appetite for the asset class despite elevated market uncertainty.

The strategic reorientation is most pronounced at Blackstone, where credit and insurance assets demonstrated 18% year-over-year growth, expanding from $318.9 billion in 2023 to $375.50 billion in 2024 and further to $432.30 billion by Q3 2025. This growth trajectory has elevated credit and insurance to represent 33% of Blackstone's total AUM in 2024, effectively surpassing the firm's private equity segment, which comprised 31% of assets. During the company's third-quarter 2025 earnings call on October 23, President and COO Jonathan Gray articulated the strategic expansion, noting that private credit markets are "expanding from their origins in non-investment-grade corporate credit and direct lending to become a key mechanism for financing the real economy, including commercial finance, consumer and residential finance, fund finance and of course, infrastructure."

Apollo Global Management reported similarly robust momentum, with private credit AUM reaching $723 billion as of September 30, 2025, following 19% year-over-year growth in 2024 to $616 billion. Private credit now comprises approximately 82% of Apollo's total AUM, compared with 79% in 2023, while private equity assets remained flat at $135 billion and declined to 18% of total assets from 21% in 2023. Ares Management's private credit segment demonstrated comparable acceleration, with AUM of $391.50 billion in Q3 2025 already exceeding full-year 2024 levels of $348.80 billion—a 22% annual increase. Private credit now comprises 72% of Ares' total assets, up from 68% in 2023, while private equity declined from $39.10 billion to $24 billion over the same period.

The collective rebalancing reflects structural shifts in capital deployment preferences among institutional investors, regulatory constraints on traditional bank lending, and the expanded scope of private credit opportunities across consumer finance, infrastructure, and specialty lending segments. These trends position private credit as a secular growth driver within alternative asset management platforms.