For most of private markets' modern history, the central question facing an advisory firm was access. Could a client participate in the asset class at all, given the minimums, the lockups, and the operational machinery of a drawdown fund? That question is now largely settled. Continuously offered, semi-liquid vehicles provide entry to private equity, private credit, and real assets at allocation-appropriate minimums, and capital has moved decisively toward them.
The scale of that movement is not in dispute, though its precise measurement is. Preqin counts 726 evergreen funds in market as of June 2025, up from roughly 520 at the end of 2023, a count that has approximately doubled over five years. New launches reached a decade high in 2025, with 123 vehicles introduced — 49 in private debt and 32 in private equity.
Asset totals depend heavily on definition, and the spread across providers is itself instructive. Preqin places evergreen net asset value near USD 427 billion as of June 2025, a figure that excludes European structures such as ELTIFs and LTAFs that do not fully disclose. MSCI reports the semi-liquid segment approaching USD 500 billion, having grown more than 30 percent over the twelve months through September 2025. PitchBook, on a United States basis, counts USD 457 billion across 486 semi-liquid evergreen funds at year-end 2025, more than half of them launched within the prior four years. Deloitte, using a narrower semi-liquid definition, records assets tripling between 2020 and 2024 to USD 349 billion.
This is the differentiation for an investment committee. The access question has been answered. The evaluation question has become harder, not easier, because the structural variation that a closed-end commitment never forced anyone to examine now sits at the center of the decision. Wealth investors already represent roughly one-fifth of private market assets under management, and the largest managers have organized their growth around the continuously offered wrapper. Structure literacy is no longer a specialist concern. It is a core allocation competency.
Source: MSCI (2025).