Infra’s $1.2trn fundraising comeback – but who really wins?

**Bruno Alves** (0:03)
Hi, I'm Bruno Alves, Editor-in-Chief of Infrastructure Investor, and welcome to the Infrastructure Investor Podcast. In today's episode, I sit down with Zak Bentley, Infrastructure Investor's Americas Editor. Zak and I do a deep dive into the latest Infrastructure Investor 100 ranking of the world's largest managers, and discuss what it tells us about the evolving shape of the global infrastructure market. With a total of $1.2 trillion dollars raised over the last five years, the numbers point to a strong recovery. But they also highlight just how concentrated the industry has become, with a handful of large cap managers commanding the lion's share of capital. We also unpack our latest quarterly data on fund performance, highlighting the dispersion between top and bottom quartile funds. The challenge is Infrastructure's reputation as a consistently defensive asset class.
Finally, we search on how strategies are evolving to reflect the digital capex supercycle we find ourselves in.
Hi, Zak, good to see you. Welcome back on the podcast.

**Zak Bentley** (1:12)
Hi, Bruno, thank you, thank you.

**Bruno Alves** (1:15)
So we've got a fair amount of ground to cover on this podcast. We've just released basically a slew of content on our side, encompassing rankings, but also our latest quarterly performance report. And I thought this would be a great time to go through some of these pieces and maybe pick out some of the highlights for the benefit of our audience. And I think maybe the obvious place to start is with our Infrastructure Investor 100 ranking, which basically tracks the largest 100 infrastructure equity GPs in the world.
We look at funds raised over a five-year period. In this case, the period in question is the 1st of January, 2021 to the 31st of December, 2025 So this is very much not an AUM ranking, and we could all have a grown-up discussion about whether that's better or worse, but we feel that fundraising keeps things a bit fresher with a five-year period. So we've got a new one out just recently published, basically showing a total of $1.2 trillion raised over the past five years by the top 100 managers. And just to frame that figure a little bit for our audience, this is actually a bit of a comeback after what was a record fundraising year in 2025 Basically, for people to have an idea, the 2024 edition of our ranking, which tracked funds raised up until the end of 2023, that had raised $1.1 trillion.
Then the 2025 edition had actually gone down to $1 trillion, and now we are back up to $1.2 trillion. So I guess first thing to say, to track all of this kind of to be expected right in terms of what we saw in terms of the fundraising bounce back in 2025

**Zak Bentley** (3:11)
Yeah, certainly. Also, I think the figures that you just mentioned also reflect the highs and lows that we have seen over the last five years. So as you say, not an AUM ranking and probably the best way to chart the fortunes or otherwise of this asset class recently.

**Bruno Alves** (3:27)
Yeah. And just to walk listeners through some of the headline changes, you know, we always have a bit of shuffling in the top 10
This year is no different. So we have BlackRock on top thanks to the latest fundraising from Global Infrastructure Partners. We actually have KKR climbing from number three to number two this year. We have Brookfield dropping from number one to number three.
So a bit of a shuffling in the top 10 There are other changes, but I find that, you know, one thing that seems to be becoming more or less permanent is listeners that are familiar with the II. 100 will probably remember that Macquarie held the top spot for 13 years.
They've lost that top spot in 2024, and they have been consigned to fourth place ever since. And that is something that doesn't seem like it will be changing, I guess. What do you think, Zak?

**Zak Bentley** (4:26)
Yeah, I think that's a symptomatic of the way that Macquarie raises capital.
As readers will well know, they have European funds, Asia funds, America's funds. And so I guess if you're a Brookfield KKR or GIP and you're raising in a global context, you're more likely to rise in this ranking. But I think Macquarie also may be somewhat different from some others in this list, where they do have adjacent strategies in renewables and super core. But I think those are a smaller part of business compared to some of the others you see in that top 10, where it seems like every GP has four different strings to their bows. And increasingly so, people have a flagship and a transition fund and an AI fund and a core fund. And so I think that's also what's really driving this top 10 here.