Share of Impact Capital Raised by Strategy

According to Pitchbook, by share of capital raised, real assets—in the Impact space, largely infrastructure—has dominated Impact fundraising over time, constituting 68.0% of Impact capital raised since 2007, compared with only 9.4% of all private capital raised.

While 2022 was not a record year in infrastructure fundraising overall, a growing number of the funds raised in that space appear to be targeting progress toward environmental or social sustainability.

These funds target renewable energy or access to essential healthcare and education, as an example.

Many infrastructure themes require very large investment amounts, leading to very large funds and the dominance of these funds in the Impact universe.

Looking at the Impact universe without the influence of infrastructure, both PE and VC have been slightly overrepresented in the Impact universe versus the private market universe at the expense of FoF and secondaries.

Private debt is itself influenced by the Impact dominance of infrastructure, as six of the 10 largest private debt funds raised in the Impact space had infrastructure in their names.

Interestingly, until this year’s Blackstone fund, the majority of the top 10 were raised prior to 2021.