Private equity acquisitions: the most active PE buyers, the biggest deals and the add-on boom

Recent private equity acquisitions and buyouts from Recent Funding's deal data, refreshed weekly: the most active PE firms over 90 days and 12 months, the biggest deals with their sourced prices, the sectors private equity is buying, and how much of it is add-ons.

As of October 19, 2026, Recent Funding tracks 2,367 private equity acquisitions: 324 announced in the last 90 days (since July 21, 2026) and 1,289 in the last 12 months. The most active PE buyer of the last 90 days is KKR with 11 deals; over 12 months it is Blackstone with 31. The largest deal of the last 12 months with an announced price is Hologic, bought by Blackstone for $18B. And 31% of the year's PE deals were add-ons: companies bought by a portfolio company a PE firm already owns.

This post is refreshed every week from the same data as the private equity deals page and the PE firm directory, so the lists below are always the current ones.

What counts as a private equity acquisition here

A deal is in this data when the buyer is a private equity firm on evidence: a firm of the Fundraising Fox Open Dataset matched by its website or exact name, a firm we checked by hand, or a buyer whose own website or public description calls it a private equity firm. A deal by a company that a PE firm owns counts too, as an add-on, when a headline about the deal says the buyer is backed by the firm or the firm's purchase of the buyer is on record. Growth equity and venture investors are left out.

77% of the 2,367 deals link to a public announcement or press article about the deal. A price is shown only when an article states it, and every price below links to that article. Most PE buyouts are announced without a price: 74 of the last 12 months' 1,289 deals have one. For 986 others, Recent Funding shows an estimate, a deliberately wide range marked with an asterisk and never counted as a price (how we estimate).

The most active private equity buyers in the last 90 days

Ranked by deals announced since July 21, 2026, then by deals over 12 months. Counts include each firm's portfolio companies' add-ons; AUM is the firm's assets under management, linked to its source (a US firm's Form ADV filing or the firm's own report).

#	Firm	Deals, 90d	Deals, 12 mo	Add-ons	AUM	What it is buying
1	KKR	11	27	5	$399.9B	Proptech, Bio and health
2	Blackstone	9	31	24	$1.35T	Fintech, Robotics and hardware
3	The Carlyle Group	9	25	11	$485B	Fintech, Bio and health
4	H.I.G. Capital	9	23	9	$72.33B	Robotics and hardware, Insurtech
5	Main Capital Partners	6	18	10	—	Enterprise software, HR and work
6	Bridgepoint	6	16	6	$97.3B	Bio and health, Security and privacy
7	Ambienta	6	12	4	—	Robotics and hardware, Fintech
8	Apollo	5	16	7	$1.05T	Proptech, Infra and devtools
9	Apax Partners	5	9	2	—	Fintech, E-commerce and retail
10	Bain Capital	4	20	12	$96.43B	Proptech, Fintech
11	Francisco Partners	4	11	5	$47.05B	Security and privacy, Bio and health
12	One Equity Partners	4	10	3	—	Robotics and hardware, Food and agriculture
13	Veritas Capital	4	7	1	$53.81B	Proptech, AI
14	Hg	4	6	2	$110B	Security and privacy, Enterprise software
15	TPG	3	18	4	$327B	Logistics and mobility, Media and marketing

The most active PE firms over the last 12 months

#	Firm	Deals, 90d	Deals, 12 mo	Add-ons	AUM	What it is buying
1	Blackstone	9	31	24	$1.35T	Fintech, Robotics and hardware
2	KKR	11	27	5	$399.9B	Proptech, Bio and health
3	The Carlyle Group	9	25	11	$485B	Fintech, Bio and health
4	H.I.G. Capital	9	23	9	$72.33B	Robotics and hardware, Insurtech
5	Bain Capital	4	20	12	$96.43B	Proptech, Fintech
6	Main Capital Partners	6	18	10	—	Enterprise software, HR and work
7	TPG	3	18	4	$327B	Logistics and mobility, Media and marketing
8	Warburg Pincus	2	17	8	$108.66B	Insurtech, Robotics and hardware
9	GTCR	3	16	17	$48.64B	Insurtech, Bio and health
10	Apollo	5	16	7	$1.05T	Proptech, Infra and devtools
11	Bridgepoint	6	16	6	$97.3B	Bio and health, Security and privacy
12	EQT	3	13	4	$388.54B	Fintech, Energy and climate
13	Accel-KKR	2	13	8	$23.81B	Bio and health, Proptech
14	Ambienta	6	12	4	—	Robotics and hardware, Fintech
15	CVC Capital Partners	2	11	1	$241.55B	Fintech, Proptech

Blackstone leads the year with 31 deals, 24 of its deals on record being add-ons by its portfolio companies. Each firm's page on the PE firm directory lists every deal behind its counts, with the sectors it is buying, its check size where the dataset gives one, and its take-privates.

The biggest PE deals of the last 12 months

Deals with a price stated in an announcement or article, largest first. Prices are the figure the article gives (an equity value or an enterprise value, as reported), converted to US dollars on the day of the announcement when stated in another currency.

The biggest PE deals of the last 90 days

Only 25 of the last 90 days' 324 PE deals came with an announced price. The newest deals, with an estimate where there is no price:

* Estimate, not announced: Recent Funding's range from public facts about the company (headcount, revenue or the offer per share; hover for the basis, the link goes to the source of that fact). How we estimate.

What sectors private equity is buying

PE deals of the last 12 months by the acquired company's category. Recent Funding's categories are built for startups, so traditional businesses land in the nearest one: industrial manufacturers and distributors are in robotics and hardware, healthcare services in bio and health, banks, wealth managers and insurers' brokers in fintech.

Robotics and hardware is the largest category with 245 deals, 19% of the year. The firm pages show the same split per buyer: "What it is buying" in the tables above is each firm's two largest categories.

The add-on trend: portfolio companies doing the buying

An add-on (or bolt-on) is an acquisition made by a company a private equity firm already owns: the firm buys a platform company, then grows it by buying smaller competitors, suppliers or neighbors. It is the buy-and-build strategy, and it is how most PE deals now get done. PitchBook's US PE Breakdown for Q2 2026 counts an estimated 885 add-ons in the quarter, roughly three-quarters of all US buyouts.

In Recent Funding's data, add-ons are the deals whose buyer is a portfolio company. By half-year of announcement since January 2025 (the last row is the half-year in progress):

The add-on share went from 12% of PE deals in the first half of 2025 to 31% in the first half of 2026. Read that rise with care: an add-on is only recognized when an article names the PE firm behind the buyer, and the older the deal, the fewer of those articles were collected, so part of it is better coverage of recent deals. Our share also stays well below PitchBook's three-quarters, because a portfolio company's small purchase often makes no headline that names its owner. Within the last 12 months, the firms whose portfolio companies made the most add-ons on record:

To see only add-ons through the API, filter the response on acquirer.pe_sponsor: it names the firm behind the buyer, and it is null for a deal the firm made directly.

Take-privates

A small share of PE deals are take-privates, where the buyer acquires a listed company and delists it: 57 in the last 12 months. They have their own post, with every take-private we track and the SEC filings behind them: take-private deals in 2026. Whether PE firms will take public companies private to rebuild them around AI, and then list them again, is the subject of a separate piece.

Get the data from the API

Every table in this post comes from two public endpoints. The PE deals, newest first (add since=YYYY-MM-DD for a window, deal_type=take_private for take-privates):

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $RF_KEY" "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/acquisitions?buyer=pe&limit=2"

The start of the response, from this post's data:

{
  "acquisitions": [
    {
      "acquirer": {
        "name": "Apax Partners",
        "pe_firm_slug": "apax-partners",
        "pe_sponsor": null
      },
      "acquired": {
        "name": "Odido Nederland",
        "slug": null,
        "ticker": null,
        "exchange": null
      },
      "announced_on": "2026-10-16",
      "price_usd": null,
      "price_source_url": null,
      "price_estimate": {
        "low": "50000000",
        "high": "500000000",
        "basis": "1,001–5,000 employees × $30K–$120K per employee (consumer and retail)"
      },
      "source_url": null,
      "source_publisher": null,
      "category": "ecommerce-retail",
      "buyer_type": "pe",
      "deal_type": null,
      "ai_thesis": null
    }
  ],
  "count": 2,
  "next_offset": 2
}

The firms, most deals in the last 12 months first:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $RF_KEY" "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/pe-firms?sort=deals_12m&limit=1"

{
  "pe_firms": [
    {
      "slug": "blackstone",
      "name": "Blackstone",
      "hq_city": "New York",
      "hq_country": "US",
      "aum_usd": "1346300000000",
      "aum_source_url": "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001393818/000119312526313250/d153439dex991.htm",
      "acquisitions": 54,
      "acquisitions_12m": 31,
      "acquisitions_90d": 9,
      "addons": 24,
      "take_privates": 6,
      "latest_acquisition": {
        "name": "Rosetree",
        "announced_on": "2026-10-06"
      },
      "top_categories": [
        {
          "key": "fintech",
          "label": "Fintech",
          "acquisitions": 9
        },
        {
          "key": "robotics-hardware",
          "label": "Robotics and hardware",
          "acquisitions": 8
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "count": 1,
  "total": 1418,
  "next_offset": 1
}

The API is free and read-only, with a free API key that takes just an email. price_usd is set only with price_source_url, the article that states it; an estimate is in price_estimate and never in price_usd. The full reference is in the API docs.

Related on Recent Funding

• Take-privates, updated daily
• Recent Funding API docs: every endpoint behind this post; a free API key takes just an email