The $5 trillion overhang: why PE’s liquidity problem is secondaries’ opportunity
From COO remarks to a $35 billion platform — why Goldman’s moves tell the secondaries story
When Goldman Sachs President and COO John Waldron took the stage at a recent investor conference, he was not talking about secondaries. He was making a case for M&A recovery.
But embedded in his remarks was a data point that cuts to the heart of why Goldman has quietly built one of the most powerful secondaries franchises in the world — and why that business is better positioned today than at almost any point in its 25-year history.
THE NUMBER THAT MATTERS
“You’ve got $1 trillion of dry powder and $4 trillion of embedded portfolio company valuation owned by private equity and venture capital firms,” Waldron said, describing what he sees as a coiled spring in the M&A market. The implication: once PE firms begin exiting and redeploying in earnest, dealmaking activity could see another step-change higher.
Goldman knows this dynamic better than most — because it sits on both sides of it. As one of the world’s leading M&A advisors and one of its largest secondaries buyers, Goldman has a direct line of sight into the liquidity pressure building across the private markets ecosystem. That $4 trillion in unrealized portfolio value is not just M&A optionality. For the LPs holding aging positions in those portfolios, it is a liquidity problem. And liquidity problems are Goldman’s Vintage Strategies platform’s core business.
WHY EXITS MATTER FOR SECONDARIES
Waldron’s remarks also contained a detail that secondaries professionals will recognize immediately: PE-related M&A is down 4% year-over-year, even as corporate M&A has surged 62% over the same period. PE sponsors are not exiting at the pace the market needs. That means LPs are sitting on longer hold periods, facing portfolio concentration, and managing J-curve pressure from newer vintages — exactly the conditions that drive secondary market supply.
Goldman has built its Vintage platform around this structural reality. Active since 1998, the program covers LP portfolio sales, venture and growth secondaries, and GP-led continuation vehicles — the full spectrum of how secondaries have evolved from a niche liquidity tool into a core part of institutional portfolio management.
Secondary Scoop's read: The divergence between corporate and PE exit activity is one of the clearest leading indicators of secondary market supply. When PE exits lag, LP pressure builds. Goldman is structured to absorb that pressure at scale.
A PLATFORM BUILT FOR THE MOMENT
Goldman’s Vintage Funds tell the fundraising story clearly. Vintage VIII closed at $10.3 billion in 2020. Vintage IX closed at $14.2 billion in 2023 — above target, reflecting both LP demand for secondaries exposure and confidence in Goldman’s execution. Each successive fund has raised meaningfully more than its predecessor, tracking the broader expansion of the market.
Vintage X, launched in April 2025, has no stated target — only a stated ambition to surpass Vintage IX. By September 2025 it had already raised approximately $8 billion, putting it on pace to become one of the largest secondaries fundraises ever recorded. Alongside Blackstone Strategic Partners, Ardian, and Lexington Partners, Goldman has raised nearly $35 billion in secondaries capital over the past five years, cementing its position as one of the four or five firms operating at true mega-scale in this market.
"Each successive fund has raised meaningfully more than its predecessor — Vintage VIII at $10.3B, Vintage IX at $14.2B, Vintage X already at ~$8B midway through its raise."
The platform has also expanded beyond its PE secondaries roots. Goldman now runs dedicated strategies in infrastructure secondaries, real estate secondaries — Vintage Real Estate Partners III closed at $3.4 billion in 2024, the largest dedicated real estate secondaries fund raised at the time — and, following the January 2026 acquisition of Industry Ventures, venture capital secondaries.
THE MARKET BACKDROP
The scale of Goldman’s ambition is matched by the scale of the market opportunity. Global secondaries transaction volume hit a record $152 billion in 2024 and was tracking toward approximately $176 billion in 2025, according to industry estimates, with analysts projecting volumes above $200 billion by 2026. If those numbers hold, the secondaries market will have more than doubled in annual transaction volume in under five years.
Continuation vehicles are a major driver. GP-led transactions now account for nearly half of all secondary activity, with single-asset CVs making up a large share of that. Goldman’s own LP survey data adds another dimension: 45% of LPs surveyed reported being below their target allocation to secondaries — a persistent undersupply of capital relative to demand that supports pricing and deal flow for buyers like Goldman.
Secondary Scoop's read: The $176 billion figure is an industry estimate, not a Goldman projection, and should be read as directional. But the direction is unambiguous — and Goldman's fundraising trajectory is one of the clearest confirmations of it.
THE WEALTH CHANNEL AS THE NEXT FRONTIER
Waldron’s conference remarks also pointed to a longer-term structural tailwind that will matter for secondaries. Goldman is investing heavily in the RIA channel and third-party wealth platforms, with its cohort of RIA partners seeing assets grow 60% since 2024. The firm is actively educating wealth advisors on private markets and private credit — part of a broader push to bring institutional-grade alternatives to high-net-worth and mass-affluent investors.
For secondaries, this creates a two-sided opportunity over time. More retail and wealth channel investors entering private markets means more future LP supply — individuals and smaller institutions that will eventually need liquidity from their illiquid holdings. It also means growing demand for secondary fund structures designed for wealth platforms: shorter duration, more liquid, more accessible than traditional blind-pool commitments.
Secondary Scoop's read: The democratization of private markets is a slow-moving but consequential tailwind for secondaries. It broadens both sides of the market over time.
WHAT WALDRON DIDN’T SAY
Goldman Sachs’ COO was not talking about secondaries. His $5 trillion framing was a thesis about M&A recovery, not about secondary market dynamics. The connection is Secondary Scoop’s own editorial interpretation — and it is worth flagging that not all of that $4 trillion will flow through secondary channels. Much of it will ultimately exit through IPOs, strategic acquisitions, or sponsor-to-sponsor deals.
But the structural logic holds: a large and growing pool of unrealized value, slow traditional exit routes, an expanding LP base, and a secondaries market already approaching $200 billion in annual volume are the conditions under which this market continues to grow. Goldman’s data point simply puts a scale on the opportunity that most participants already intuitively understand.
The engine, as Waldron put it, has not yet turned on. Goldman has spent 25 years building the infrastructure to capture it when it does.
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