Apollo Smashes $5.4B Target for Debut Secondaries Fund—Wall Street Scrambles to Keep Up
Private equity giant Apollo Global Management just flexed its muscle with a $5.4 billion close for its first secondaries fund—overshooting its target by nearly $1 billion. The move signals institutional investors’ hunger for alternative assets even as traditional markets wobble.
Why it matters: Secondaries (buying stakes in existing PE funds) are becoming the ultimate ’smart money’ play—letting institutional players bypass decade-long lockups while still grabbing private equity upside. Apollo’s fund will target LP stakes in late-stage tech, healthcare, and yes—crypto-native ventures.
The cynical take: Nothing says ’top of the market’ like PE firms raising war chests to buy each other’s overvalued portfolio companies. But with Apollo’s track record, expect this capital to flow into blockchain infrastructure plays that VCs are too skittish to touch post-crash.
Apollo announced the final close of Apollo S3 Equity and Hybrid Solutions Fund I, the flagship equity secondaries drawdown strategy of Apollo’s Sponsor and Secondary Solutions (S3) platform, with approximately $5.4 billion in commitments. The final closing exceeded the target, reflecting strong support from a diverse group of global investors including pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, financial institutions and the Wealth segment. The new fund brings total capital raised across the Apollo S3 platform to nearly $10 billion since launching in August 2022.
S3 and ASEHS seek to provide a holistic set of financing and liquidity solutions, including secondary investments, net asset value (NAV) loans, GP lending, staking and more, for private markets sponsors and investors across asset classes, leveraging Apollo’s expertise in private markets and global, integrated platform. Following record levels of secondary transaction activity in 2024, Apollo believes the Fund is well positioned to continue to address significant market needs for dynamic liquidity solutions for GPs and LPs while providing strong alignment with investors.
Co-Heads of Apollo S3 Steve Lessar, Veena Isaac and Konnin Tam said, “We believe this successful fundraise solidifies S3 as a leading investment platform providing flexible capital solutions across the secondaries landscape. The strong support that we received from our global investors reflects our differentiated platform and strategy, our disciplined, partnership-oriented approach, as well as the vast and growing opportunity set in private market secondaries.”
Apollo Co-President Scott Kleinman said, “We have made incredible progress since launching our S3 business unit less than three years ago, efficiently scaling a new business line in a high-growth market. The provision of liquidity solutions in a variety of formats to both sponsors and LP investors is an increasingly important part of the financial ecosystem, and we believe the S3 platform is positioned as a creative capital solutions provider of choice amid robust market demand.”
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP represented Apollo in connection with the closing of ASEHS.
Source: Apollo
