How continuation vehicles are reshaping infra investing

Bruno Alves (0:03)

Hi, I'm Bruno Alves, Editor-in-Chief of Infrastructure Investor, and welcome to the Infrastructure Investor Podcast. Infrastructure continuation vehicles have come a long way from a niche technology with a somewhat spotty reputation to a key tool that is less about extending ownership for its sake, and more about enabling the next phase of growth for the asset class. In today's episode, I sat down with America's editor, Zak Bentley, to discuss why GP labs are now reshaping the infrastructure secondaries market, how LP attitudes towards continuation vehicles have shifted, and why high growth digital infrastructure platforms are proving fertile ground for continuation vehicles.

Hi, Zak. Welcome to the podcast.

Zak Bentley (0:53)

Hi, Bruno. Good to be here.

Bruno Alves (0:56)

So we've been doing a lot of secondaries focused content lately. I feel it's been a bit of a slow but steady build up. We've been seeing secondaries fundraising increase steadily year by year to the point where it's now noticeable in our fundraising figures.

We did a recent podcast with Andrea Ackberg, the head of infrastructure at Pantheon, where she made the case that secondaries are now really an infrastructure secondaries at that core part of LP allocations. And now we've also published a cover story, our latest from our September issue, which is focused on the growth of GP-led secondaries and specifically the role of continuation vehicles in driving this market in infrastructure. And I just want to very quickly frame the debate. Using some data from placement agent Campo Lutyens. So their total volume in the first half of the year of infrastructure secondaries totaled some 10 billion and 78% of that came from GP-led transactions, mostly really continuation fund activity, which is quite something compared to the 55% of GP-leds driving transaction growth in 2025

Campo Lutyens expects total volume of infrastructure secondaries in 2026 to go up to 26 billion, and they are showing from 2022 to now a 32% peggar. So these are very, very chunky figures, all kind of speaking to the momentum behind this market. But, Zak, let's go into this. So you've just written our cover story. CVs are in the driving seat and in a very different position than they were a few years ago, right?

Zak Bentley (3:00)

Yeah. I think what's really important to add to those statistics you just mentioned is for the first half of 2026, infrastructure, GP leds, according to Campbell Lutton's, accounted for 15% of the overall market. I mean, you were talking infrastructure specific numbers there. When we talk about the wider private markets area of all the GP led deals infrastructure was 15%. That's huge compared to H1 2025 That was 6%.

So it's not only just becoming massive in infrastructure. Infrastructure CVs are becoming massive in private markets. They were well ahead of any other asset class after buyouts.

Bruno Alves (3:41)

Yeah. No, you're totally right. It's the way distribution has shifted completely. And so what has effectively changed? I mean, we all know that the sort of running joke, you know, CVs were the technology to use a term from the secondaries folks that was sort of used to sweep things under the carpet and keep the bad things going. But I feel this is almost like a myth that the secondaries players probably wince when they hear this. But you tell me, what have you found, Zak, when you were writing your story? What has changed?

Zak Bentley (4:13)

Firstly, I mean, on a very basic level, what has changed is that the infrastructure asset class has got older. And so more funds are coming to maturity. And so people are looking at different exit options. And a CV is one of those. We haven't had as many in the past because back in 2010, 2012, there were only so many fund managers. So we're definitely getting that. And you can see that, say, with one of the CVs that we discussed in the cover story, iSquared CV for Incure, the Peruvian Power Platform, that's come from their Fund 1 We think of iSquared as a very established infrastructure fund manager these days. They're still realizing Fund 1 So that's part of it on a very basic level. And then the other part is you do have a much stronger suite of infrastructure secondary buyers. As you mentioned, there's been so much fundraising going on, that the people that can see these platforms, these continuation vehicles, there's a wider suite of those funds to do so.

And it's more in demand. And then thirdly, the thing that's really been taking off in the last 18 to 24 months is the data center aspect.

Lots of data center platforms being rolled into continuation vehicles, whether in a large cap setting or more of a mid cap setting, as people just see so much more room for growth. And frankly, they have high performing platforms that they don't want to get rid of.