Good morning! As we head into the back part of the week, much ink has been spilled (including in our newsletter) over the travails of Blue Owl Capital’s business development companies and the potential implications for the broader private credit market. Leaders across the private markets industry have sought to calm investor fears particularly among their public shareholders and across private wealth channels. But as our own Chris Cumming writes, the crisis of confidence that sent shares of listed private markets firms plunging doesn't necessarily portend disaster for their privately-held portfolios.

Meanwhile, our WSJ Pro Venture Capital colleague Yuliya Chernova got the scoop on Thrive Capital’s sweet investment in OpenAI, done at a fraction of the company’s current valuation.

Dive in for more details on these stories and many more …

The selloff hitting some listed private-markets managers hasn’t yet bled into the rest of the industry—and things would have to get far worse before it does, WSJ Pro's Chris Cumming writes, citing securities analysts. The basic cause of the declines in share prices is lack of transparency, analysts say. The shares have been dragged down by concerns that private-credit investments could go sour en masse, and that artificial intelligence advances will kill some sponsor-backed software companies. Investors don’t know what’s in many private-credit portfolios, so they fear the worst. Many have chosen to cash out rather than roll the dice.

Joshua Kushner’s firm Thrive Capital recently invested in OpenAI at a valuation of $285 billion, about a third of the price the artificial intelligence company is seeking in an ongoing financing round, WSJ Pro's Yuliya Chernova reports, citing people familiar with the situation. The deal, totaling at least $1 billion and completed in December, was negotiated as part of an investment early last year that allowed Thrive to put capital into OpenAI at a preferential price over a period of time.

Eclipse Capital, Balderton Capital and SoftBank Group led a $1.2 billion growth investment in U.K. self-driving software and systems provider Wayve Technologies as it seeks to scale the commercial deployment of its products, Megan Cheah reports for the Journal. The deal, which also included several strategic investors, valued the London-based company at $8.6 billion.

Wynnchurch Capital in Rosemont, Ill., is acquiring the barge and tank business of Arcosa for about $450 million through a corporate carve-out to establish it as a stand-alone business. Based in Covington, La., Arcosa Marine Products makes vessels used on U.S. inland waterways to transport bulk cargo such as agricultural commodities and oil. The deal is expected to close by the end of June, according to an Arocsa securities filing.

Baird Capital has acquired a majority stake in software and services company autoLoto, a Coeur d’Alene, Idaho-based business that provides mobile worksite safety applications used by workers whose jobs put them in proximity to hazardous energy equipment and sources.

European buyout firm EQT AB has dropped its pursuit of London-listed cell and gene therapy supplier Oxford Biomedica after the company's directors determined that the firm's prospective offers undervalued the business, according to regulatory filings. The University of Oxford spinout's shares tumbled about 7.5% Wednesday in London, giving it a market capitalization of about £825.3 million, or roughly $1.1 billion.

Our add-on deal interactive tool allows you to sort and analyze volumes of add-on deal data compiled by WSJ Pro. View more.

General Atlantic in New York plans to sell at least some of its stake in TikTok owner ByteDance at an enterprise value of $550 billion, or 66% more than the Chinese business was estimated to be worth just last year, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. General Atlantic has backed ByteDance since 2017, when it was valued around $20 billion, Reuters said.

Frazier Healthcare Partners-backed clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company 35Pharma is being acquired by strategic buyer GSK for about $950 million in cash. Frazier led a $53 million growth investment in the Montreal-based company in 2024, along with other investors including Vivo Capital and Deep Track Capital.

Ascend Capital Partners collected $791 million for its second flagship fund, Ascend Capital Partners Fund II, by the time it held a final close for the vehicle. That's about 39% more than the New York firm's debut fund, which had $570 when it closed in 2021. Ascend, which focuses on investing in healthcare operations, began raising the new vehicle in 2023.

Siguler Guff & Co. is seeking $200 million for its first fund dedicated to co-investments in small buyout deals, according to a presentation made in January to the Vermont Pension Investment Commission, which considered a commitment of up to $25 million to the fund. Siguler Guff is pitching the fund to co-invest in deals alongside its small buyout opportunities funds, which back fund commitments, co-investments and secondary deals. The firm is currently pitching Siguler Guff Small Buyout Opportunities Fund VI and had raised at least $1.67 billion for the vehicle as of last December, a regulatory filing shows.

Baird Capital in Chicago has collected over $416 million so far for its Baird Capital Global Fund III and affiliated vehicles, nearly reaching the $425 million indicated target in a securities filing. The private investment arm of investment bank Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee has been raising the fund for about a year, filings show.

Francisco Partners is officially marketing its eighth flagship fund, Francisco Partners VIII, along with a separate vehicle, Francisco Partners Agility IV, securities filings show. Neither filing states a target value, but the San Francisco-based firm banked $13.5 billion for its seventh flagship fund and $3.3 billion for the third Agility fund in 2022. Investors in the latest flagship vehicle include the San Antonio Fire and Police Pension Fund, which committed $25 million, the WSJ Pro Private Equity LP Commitments database shows.

Some of the individual investors who piled into private-credit funds in recent years are now wondering whether they made a mistake, the Journal reports, citing a rush to the exits prompted by a Blue Owl Capital business development company's move to sell some assets and end quarterly redemptions by investors. Now the wealth advisers who connect clients with such funds are facing one of their first big tests. Many say they haven’t lost faith in private credit and are counseling their clients to stay put.

New Mountain Capital-affiliated business development company New Mountain Finance Corp. identified the buyer of assets worth $477 million it is selling as a newly formed Coller Capital vehicle, and detailed some of the borrowers included in the sale. Over a third, 37%, of the assets involved generate payment-in-kind, or non-cash, income, according to John Kline, the listed BDC's president and chief executive. Borrowers reflected in the PIK assets include Benevis and Dealer Tire. The BDC held assets with a fair value of $2.8 billion at the end of last year and Kline told analysts on an earnings call Wednesday that the sale will reduce leverage as well as PIK income for the remaining holdings overall. The asset sale is planned at a discount of 6% to fair value. The BDC's stock fell 4% Wednesday to end at $7.83, its lowest close in over five years.

Madison Capital Funding has agreed to pay a $900,000 penalty in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations the firm breached its fiduciary duties over certain loans it sold to private fund clients in 2020 without reasonably determining whether the loans were marked at fair market value, the SEC said. Madison settled with the agency without admitting or denying the agency’s claims. The firm had already voluntarily reimbursed its funds more than $5.2 million, including interest ,after receiving a deficiency letter from the SEC in 2021.

Shares of private-asset managers shouldn't be expected to bounce back right away from declines spurred by worries over the impact of artificial-intelligence technology advances, Telis Demos writes for the Journal's Heard on the Street column. The largest firms – many that hold software makers in their funds – have seen their shares sink alongside swaths of the rest of the market in recent sessions. Perhaps surprisingly, though, the correction in many of these managers’ shares has actually been sharper, especially when viewed across a longer time horizon.

Private-credit defaults are expected to keep rising as 2026 unfolds – along with defaults on other types of debt – before stabilizing late in the year, according to UBS analysts. They expect to see a roughly 5% increase in private-credit defaults this year, with a worst-case scenario as high as 15%, but they consider this unlikely, a spokeswoman tells WSJ Pro's Ted Bunker.

Blue Owl Capital business development company Blue Owl Capital Corp. II's $600 million asset sale isn't expected to affect the BDC's credit quality, according to Fitch Ratings. The credit-scoring firm noted that such a large sale is unusual, but consistent with the needs of an unlisted lending operation to return capital to their investors or wind down the business. Fitch has a stable outlook on the credit, which it rates as BBB-.

Canadian pension investment manager Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, also known as La Caisse, produced a 9.3% average return last year across 48 funds, trailing its 10.9% benchmark. The organization ended last year with assets of about 517 billion Canadian dollars, or roughly $377.38 billion. La Caisse said its private equity holdings generated a 2.3% return last year, far lower than its benchmark of 12.6%. Private credit holdings did better, returning 9.6% for 2025, topping its reference index, which gained 6.6%.

Blackstone-affiliated specialty finance company Blackstone Secured Lending Fund plans a special repurchase of up to $250 million in its shares, which are listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The buybacks will be offered at an unspecified discount through open-market transactions. The operations, regulated as a business development company, make direct loans to midmarket businesses and had investments valued at $14.2 billion at the end of last year, up 8.5% from a year earlier. Fourth-quarter net investment income declined about 4.8% to 80 cents a share. The stock rose 3.4% Wednesday following the results.

Credit-focused 5C Investment Partners is getting support from the Qatar Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund, which is investing in the recently established firm. Started in 2024 by Goldman Sachs veterans Tom Connolly and Michael Koester, New York-based 5C has about $3 billion in investable capital.

Private-credit market risk tied to software company loans amid disruptive threats from artificial intelligence technology advances don't pose a systemic threat to the broader economy, Brookfield Asset Management Chief Executive Bruce Flatt said during an interview on Bloomberg television. Fears of such effects are overblown, he said.

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Maria Armental; Ted Bunker; Chris Cumming; Luis Garcia; Laura Kreutzer; Isaac Taylor; Chitra Vemuri.