Introduction
The growth equity firm Lead Edge Capital appears on two different buyers' partner lists. Blue Owl named it in January 2023 among 17 managers in which its fifth Dyal fund held minority stakes, and Bonaccord Capital Partners named it among its second fund's investments two years later. Buyers of GP stakes, minority shares in the firms that act as general partner (GP) of private funds, form a group small enough to meet on the same cap tables, yet their strategies differ far more than the label suggests: some back the largest private equity houses, others middle-market managers taking outside capital for the first time. When a manager sells part of itself, the transaction set out in GP Stakes Explained, deciding whom to call is much of what its private capital advisory (PCA) team is hired for, and because a stake has no maturity, the counterparty is chosen once.
The Dedicated GP Stakes Buyers, Segmented by Manager Size
The core of the universe is a handful of platforms that raise money from limited partners (LPs) specifically to buy minority stakes in managers. The cleanest way to sort them is by the size of firm they target, and size here means fee-paying assets, because management fees are the stream a stake buyer shares in most reliably, as the article on how a GP is valued shows.
- Fee-Paying Assets Under Management (FPAUM)
The portion of a manager's assets on which it currently charges management fees, such as commitments to a fund in its investment period or invested capital afterward. It excludes assets that pay no fee, such as many co-investment vehicles and the firm's own capital, so it is usually smaller than total assets under management and a closer guide to fee income.
Size decides the check size a buyer writes, the help it can credibly offer, and how much of the price rests on fees already contracted rather than funds still to be raised. Each capital figure below is dated, since these numbers move with every raise.
| Buyer | Parent | Typical target | Dated capital figure | Notable feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Owl GP Strategic Capital (Dyal) | Blue Owl, listed | Generally above $10 billion of FPAUM | Dyal Capital Partners V, $12.9 billion (January 2023) | 40+ person business services team |
| Blackstone GP Stakes | Blackstone | Private-markets managers, globally | Strategic Capital Holdings II, $5.6 billion (November 2021) | Sits in the secondaries business |
| Petershill | Goldman Sachs Asset Management | Established and early-stage managers | $17 billion+ raised, 54+ firms (March 2026) | Investing since 2007 |
| Hunter Point Capital | Independent | Middle-market managers | Fund I, $3.3 billion (March 2024) | Permanent capital |
| Bonaccord Capital Partners | Ridgepost Capital (formerly P10) | Mid-sized managers | Fund II, $1.6 billion (January 2025) | Co-investment alongside stakes |
| Investcorp Strategic Capital Group | Investcorp | GPs with $1 billion to $10 billion | Fund II, $1.1 billion plus co-investment (March 2026) | Places LP commitments into partner funds |
Large-Manager Platforms: Blue Owl, Blackstone, Petershill
Blue Owl GP Strategic Capital, built on the Dyal business, raised the largest single fund in the table. Blue Owl's announcement of the Dyal Capital Partners V close described passive, minority equity intended primarily to build GP balance sheets at about 20 firms, and named CVC, PAI Partners and MBK Partners among the first 17. That is primary capital: it goes into the manager for larger GP commitments, not to founders personally.
Blackstone GP Stakes, launched in 2014 and focused solely on private-markets GPs since 2017, was renamed from Blackstone Strategic Capital Holdings in March 2025. Blackstone's first-quarter 2025 quarterly report places it in the secondaries business beside Strategic Partners, aiming for recurring annual cash yield plus long-term appreciation. Petershill, now held through Goldman Sachs-managed private funds, adds a seeding-style channel: cornerstone LP capital for early-stage managers in exchange for permanent stakes.
Mid-Market Specialists: Hunter Point, Bonaccord, Investcorp
The mid-market buyers sell hands-on support as much as capital. Hunter Point Capital, founded in 2020 by GSO co-founder Bennett Goodman and Avi Kalichstein, raised $3.3 billion of permanent capital against a $2.5 billion target, with eight partners including Coller Capital, Inflexion and L Catterton, and offers help with fundraising, hiring and group purchasing. Bonaccord, bought from abrdn by P10 in September 2021, more than doubled its first fund with the second, and counts Synova and Park Square among its partners. Investcorp Strategic Capital Group, set up in 2019, draws the size line most explicitly: its second fund targets middle-market GPs managing $1 billion to $10 billion.
Strategic, Insurance, and Multi-Strategy Buyers
Two other groups bid. The first is multi-strategy platforms running GP stakes alongside secondaries: Blackstone, and Goldman Sachs Asset Management, whose Vintage secondaries funds share a house with Petershill. Such a buyer may also bid on the manager's continuation vehicles, against the firms described in the secondaries buyer universe.
The second is strategic buyers, often insurers wanting a product partnership as well as a return. In May 2025, Dai-ichi Life Holdings announced it would acquire a further 10.3% of Capula, a London alternative manager, taking its stake to 15% to diversify its asset management earnings and develop products jointly, after an earlier investment in the credit manager Canyon Partners. A board seat made Capula an equity-method affiliate, the treatment explained in this primer on the equity method. Strategics hold stakes with no fund clock but want more influence; those wanting control buy the whole manager, covered in the financial institutions group (FIG) guide's article on asset manager acquisitions.
What GP Stakes Buyers Underwrite
Every buyer prices the same three streams: fees, carry, and balance-sheet returns. What changes by segment is where the diligence effort goes, because a large manager's risk sits in different places from a young firm's.
| Question | Large-manager buyers | Mid-market buyers |
|---|---|---|
| Fundraising trajectory | Flagship continuity, new strategies | Whether Fund III or IV can scale |
| Key person and succession | Depth across several teams | Often one or two founders, so decisive |
| Fee durability | Large, diversified fee base | Fees concentrated in one or two funds |
| Carry realization | Secondary to fees | Bigger share of value where fees barely cover costs |
| Cultural fit | Institutional reporting exists | Reporting often built for the deal |
| Value-add platform | Balance-sheet capital | Fundraising, hiring, purchasing support |
The first two rows weigh most in both segments. A stake has no obligor, so the buyer's return depends on the manager raising its next funds, and succession decides whether the firm raising Fund VI is the one the buyer underwrote. Fee-related earnings (FRE) durability is the cushion: fees locked in for a decade give a buyer time to be wrong about the next raise.
Building the Buyer Shortlist From the Seller's Side
A seller's advisor rarely calls every buyer. A targeted process protects confidentiality, since the buyers know the manager's competitors and LPs, and spares founders months of diligence with bidders that cannot win. Five tests narrow the list:
- Check size and concentration: a $1.6 billion fund cannot anchor a very large stake in a mega-manager, and a $12.9 billion fund may find a small firm not worth the effort.
- Carry versus fee appetite: whether the buyer wants yield from fee earnings or will take carry and balance-sheet exposure.
- The buyer's own fund clock: the vintage and remaining life of the investing vehicle.
- Portfolio conflicts: stakes in direct competitors, or a value-add team introducing two partner firms to the same LPs.
- Value-add services: what the platform delivers, who staffs it, and what existing partners say.
The Buyer's Own Fund Clock
The fund clock is the test most often missed. A closed-end stakes fund has LPs expecting cash yield and eventually a realization; a permanent-capital vehicle like Hunter Point's does not.
- GP Stakes Fund
A pooled investment vehicle that raises capital from institutional investors to buy minority interests in private markets managers. Its returns come from a share of the managers' fees, carry, and balance-sheet gains, and depending on its structure it is either a closed-end fund with a finite life or a permanent-capital vehicle with no required exit.
A buyer late in its fund's life needs one of the negotiated exits, a sale back to the manager, an initial public offering, or an onward sale, sooner, and may press harder for exit rights in the documents.
The shortlist also sets the seller's own diligence. Buyers spend months testing the manager; the manager tests a buyer mainly through reference calls to firms already on its partner list, like the Lead Edge entries both Blue Owl and Bonaccord published. For an owner that will never leave on a schedule, how it treated those firms through a weak fundraise or a founder's retirement is the best evidence a seller can gather.
