Adams Street Raises Over $5 Billion for Its Latest Secondaries Program, Anchored by a $2.7 Billion Global Secondary Fund 8
Adams Street Partners has secured more than $5 billion in capital commitments for its latest Secondaries Investment Program, including the close of Global Secondary Fund 8 at $2.7 billion, the firm announced August 3. The raise is roughly 50% larger than Adams Street’s previous secondaries program, which closed in May 2023 at $3.2 billion anchored by Global Secondary Fund 7.
The firm, which manages more than $73 billion in assets globally, said the program drew “strong support from new and existing institutional investors globally.” Adams Street has not disclosed a full breakdown of the $5 billion between the flagship commingled fund and the separate accounts and other vehicles that run alongside it, a structure the firm has used in prior program-level announcements as well.
A Program That Keeps Doubling on Itself
Adams Street has now posted back-to-back step-ups of roughly the same magnitude. Global Secondary Fund 6 closed in 2019 at approximately $1.05 billion and went on to rank in the top quartile of its vintage. Global Secondary Fund 7 closed in May 2023 at $3.2 billion — a program the firm described at the time as “50% larger” than the GSF6-anchored raise. Global Secondary Fund 8 now closes at $2.7 billion within a $5 billion-plus program that Adams Street again describes as roughly 50% larger than its predecessor.
The firm’s overall AUM has grown alongside the secondaries platform, from $54 billion at the time of the 2023 close to more than $73 billion today, a roughly 35% increase in three years. Adams Street’s dedicated secondary strategy dates to 1986, and the firm has completed more than 310 secondary transactions and holds advisory board seats at more than 500 underlying funds, according to the firm’s strategy disclosures. It was also named Secondary Investor of the Year in the 2025 Real Deals Private Equity Awards.
“We are grateful for the strong support of our investors and the confidence they have placed in Adams Street and our secondaries platform. Rising transaction volumes highlight the growing role of secondaries as a liquidity and portfolio management tool for private markets participants.” Jeff Akers, Partner & Head of Secondary Investments, Adams Street Partners
Jeff Diehl, Managing Partner and Head of Investments, tied the raise to the breadth of the market Adams Street is now underwriting across: “As the secondary market expands across both LP-led and GP-led transactions, investors need managers with deep relationships, underwriting rigor, and global reach to navigate a broader opportunity set. We believe Adams Street is well positioned to source differentiated opportunities and invest with conviction on behalf of our clients,” he said.
The Backdrop: A $226 Billion Market
Adams Street’s raise lands against a secondary market that, by Evercore’s estimate, hit approximately $226 billion in total deal volume in 2025, a 41% jump over the prior record and the first year the market has cleared $200 billion. LP-led volume reached roughly $120 billion (up 34% year-over-year) and GP-led volume roughly $106 billion (up 51%), with Evercore also citing about $215 billion in dry powder and next-twelve-month fundraising targets up 89% year-over-year.
WHY THE FUNDRAISING BACKDROP MATTERS
Evercore’s full-year number came in well above its own end-of-year projection of $171 billion, the market outran the forecasters. For a manager like Adams Street, a bigger addressable deal flow and more capital chasing it cuts two ways: more differentiated opportunity to underwrite, but also more competition for the same LP-led portfolios and GP-led continuation vehicles. Adams Street’s framing, “disciplined and targeted”, is the firm’s way of signaling it isn’t simply riding the volume wave into larger, less selective deployment.
Two Distribution Motions, One Platform
The raise also lands a little over a month after Secondary Scoop reported that INVL Family Office, the largest multi-family office in the Baltic states, had launched a closed-end feeder, the Global PE Secondaries Access Fund, giving its clients exposure to the private equity secondary market through Adams Street as the underlying manager. That vehicle, approved by the Bank of Lithuania in June 2026, carries a $145,000 minimum ticket aimed at informed investors rather than institutions.
Taken together, the two stories describe the same platform pulling in two directions at once: a $5 billion-plus institutional flagship program scaling in the traditional LP channel, and a parallel licensing of the same underlying strategy to regional distributors serving family offices and high-net-worth investors who would never write a check directly into Global Secondary Fund 8. Neither motion is new in isolation — large secondaries platforms have courted institutional scale for years, and feeder structures for wealth channels have proliferated across private markets generally. What’s notable is seeing both play out from the same manager within a matter of weeks.