Welcome back. AI has been a focus for both private equity and venture capital, but a newly published report shows that VCs have been far more active in adopting it into their portfolio companies.

The report published today by private-markets consulting firm Accordion and financial operations startup Ramp showed that 59% of PE portfolio companies have adopted AI models, platforms or tools, compared with 77% of VC ones. 

Accordion's chief executive, Nick Leopard, said the gap comes down to differences in mindset. “If the mantra of VC is ‘move fast and break things,' the mantra of PE-backed companies is ‘move deliberately and fix things,’” Leopard said. 

In this morning's news, Apollo Global Management is selling back to Intel a 49% stake in an Ireland-based microchip factory, in a deal that generates a big windfall for the private-markets firm in less than two years, the Journal's Matt Wirz writes. The Journal also reports that Elon Musk’s SpaceX has filed confidentially for an IPO—the first of three mega-listings expected this year.

We have these and more. Read on…

Intel has agreed to repurchase the 49% stake in its Ireland-based microchip factory it sold to Apollo Global Management for $14.2 billion. That’s a 27% premium to the $11.2 billion Apollo paid for the stake in the project in 2024 when the company was struggling to raise affordable capital amid heavy operating losses, Matt Wirz reports for The Wall Street Journal. The buyback gives Intel the full benefit of revenue from the factory as artificial intelligence-driven demand for advanced microchips sends pricing higher. It also gives a big windfall to Apollo and the debt investors who backed the deal. The private-credit investment firm paid for much of the financing by raising debt sold to its captive insurance company Athene and to other insurers and fund managers. Collectively they will make a blended annualized return around 15%, a person familiar with the matter said.

Private funds-backed SpaceX has registered confidentially for an initial public offering that could rank as the largest IPO ever, Corrie Driebusch and Micah Maidenberg report for the Journal. The company, controlled by billionaire Elon Musk, aims to raise as much as $80 billion through the offering, the Journal has reported. Backers of the company number in the hundreds, according to PitchBook data, including dozens of venture-capital and private-equity firms.

Asset manager Franklin Templeton is buying 250 Digital, a spinoff from cryptocurrency investment firm CoinFund, to expand its offerings in the emerging industry, Vicky Ge Huang reports for the Journal. The firm made an early entry into crypto in 2018 and has assembled a digital-assets team of more than 50 people.

Apollo Global Management has acquired the property-management and investment arm of Shariah-compliant Gatehouse Bank in London. Gatehouse Living Group works with institutional investors to finance and manage single-family rental homes in the U.K.

Värde Partners is leading a group that is taking on $1.7 billion from digital banking and payments services provider Klarna Group through a significant risk transfer transaction, freeing up capital for the lender. The three-year deal through Värde's asset-based finance strategy represents over $40 billion in loan capacity.

Wynnchurch Capital has acquired inland barge business Arcosa Marine Products from its publicly traded parent Arcosa for $450 million.

Inflexion's deal to acquire Finnish fire protection technology company Marioff, a provider of high-pressure water mist fire suppression systems, is valued at over $500 million, Sebastian McCarthy reports for sister publication Private Equity News in London, citing people familiar with the matter. Marioff generated revenue of about $266 million in its latest fiscal year.

KKR led a $90 million growth investment in software development platform provider Coder Technologies, joined by others including Uncork Capital. The Austin, Texas-based company's cloud-based platform is used by application developers to build and test programs.

Schooner Capital is participating in a $50 million growth investment in drone fulfillment company Manna Air Delivery, joined by the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and other investors. The money is expected to fuel the company's U.S. expansion.

Godspeed Capital Management is backing command and control systems developer Galt Aerospace. The San Diego company has built high-altitude networking and sensing systems for multiple branches of the U.S. armed forces.

Midmarket investor H.I.G. Capital in Miami has acquired aviation security services provider Global Elite Group from Swedish company Securitas, which said the sale resulted in an unspecified capital gain. Global has around 1,800 employees and safeguards client operations at 19 of the top 20 U.S. airports.

Industrial sector investor ITE Management has acquired freight container provider CS Leasing Holding, which specializes in bulk liquids tanks and dry freight. The company has about 55,000 units across four continents.

Wafra in New York has acquired a seven-building shopping center in Ramsey, N.J., through a joint venture with developer Crossroads Cos. The property attracts about 4.3 million shopper visits annually.

Guardian Capital Partners has acquired nut-based ingredients supplier Nügredient Solutions, investing through its Guardian Capital Partners Fund IV. The Modesto, Calif.-based company's products are used in the food services and packaged goods industries.

Eir Partners Capital in Miami is backing technology-enabled services provider Long Tail Health Solutions, which works with healthcare providers to secure payments for their services.

Apex Capital is backing food brand El Latino as it expands in the U.S. María Elena Ibañez remains president of the Miami-based business.

Midmarket firm Oak Hill Capital is backing Guild Garage Group, an Orlando, Fla.-based network of automatic garage door service providers. The company has more than 500 certified technicians and 28 local brands across 30 states.

Cordillera Investment Partners is backing British firm Northridge Law with a minority investment to support its expansion in areas of sports legal matters. The firm has 44 professionals on staff and has specialized in sports law since inception in 2017. 

Apollo Global Management is adding to its support for air transport and logistics company Quito Group in France, providing an additional €70 million, or roughly $80.9 million, capital expenditure credit line after the company rolled over €250 million in debt. The fresh financing is expected to help the Marseille-based company expand, according to an emailed news release.

Arcline Investment Management in Nashville, Tenn., on Wednesday backed off from pursuit of U.K. aerospace and defense company Senior, which said Tuesday that it had extended a deadline to negotiate with a Blackstone-Tinicum group after receiving their preliminary offer on March 3. Advent International in Boston has also put forward a preliminary offer, of 270 pence a share plus a 2 pence final dividend, which would give the company an equity value of over £1 billion, or $1.33 billion. Senior said last week that discussions with Advent were continuing.

London buyout firm Hg completed the acquisition of finance-management software supplier OneStream, taking the Nasdaq-listed business private at a valuation of $6.4 billion. Minority investors include General Atlantic and Tidemark. The buyers offered $24 a share for the Birmingham, Mich.-based company in January.

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

Canadian private-equity firm Clairvest Group sold its stake in Star Waste Systems to strategic buyer Casella Waste Systems for about $38 million, Kelly Cloonan reports for Dow Jones Newswires. The company serves customers in the Boston area and operates processing and recycling facilities. The firm had backed the company since 2022.

Paine Schwartz Partners has sold pest-control company AgBiTech to a unit of chemical manufacturer BASF. The company develops biological products to eradicate caterpillars from row crops using naturally occurring viruses. Paine Schwartz had backed the company since 2015.

Concentric Equity Partners and Summer Street Capital Partners have sold Frontier Waste Solutions to GFL Environmental. Dallas-based Frontier provides trash collection and recycling services to over 460,000 customers around Texas with a fleet of 665 trucks stationed in 24 locations. Chicago-based Concentric, the investing arm of Financial Investments Corp., and Orchard Park, N.Y.-based Summer Street acquired their interests in Frontier in 2022.

Japan-focused private-equity firm Nippon Sangyo Suishin Kiko in Tokyo has wrapped up its NSSK Series IV Funds with about ¥250 billion, or roughly $1.58 billion, reaching the firm's hard cap for the funds. The buyout firm targets niche businesses with strong cash flow, including those in the midst of successions, in special situations and looking for carve-out partners.

New Vintage Partners has held the final close of its inaugural fund with $82 million of committed capital. Including Fund I and associated co-investment opportunities, NVP expects to deploy more than $125 million from this vintage by the end of the current quarter. 

Canyon Partners has closed its first collateralized loan obligation deal of the year, wrapping up Canyon CLO 2026-1 with $500 million and funded by the Dallas-based firm's Canyon CLO Equity Fund IV.

Align Capital Partners has closed a single asset continuation fund with commitments of about $405 million to back legal services provider Proceed Legal in a transaction led by Align, Apogem Capital, RCP Advisors and Churchill Asset Management. Align acquired the New York-based business in 2023, when it was called Counsel Press.

Stephen Nesbitt is private credit’s chief evangelist. His investors and the industry are having a crisis of faith, Gregory Zuckerman and Peter Rudegeair write for the Journal. For more than a decade, Nesbitt championed what became the hottest asset class on Wall Street. His firm, Cliffwater, went from managing no money to nearly $50 billion on the back of impressive fundraising and big gains, turning Nesbitt into a billionaire. Now, many of the wealthy individuals who powered Cliffwater’s rise are itching to leave, as investors rethink their views on private credit.

Partners Group in Switzerland has added Pete Zippelius as co-head of private-equity health & life alongside Benjamin Breier. Zippelius, who is based in the U.S., was most recently with Leonard Green & Partners.

European private-equity firm CVC Capital Partners has appointed Enrico Del Prete as a partner and co-head of the value-add strategy within the firm's CVC DIF infrastructure investing arm, based in London. He was most recently with I Squared Capital.

Brightstar Capital Partners in New York is adding Eric Epstein as a partner and co-chair. He was previously president and vice chairman of Davidson Kempner Capital Management.

Growth investor Petrichor Healthcare Capital Management in New York has added Paul Sekhri as an operating partner. The life sciences industry executive currently leads biopharmaceutical company vTv Therapeutics.

Dividend recapitalizations by buyout firms surged over 2024 and 2025 as the sponsors faced an exit logjam and sought alternative routes to providing liquidity, Moody's reports, with div recaps driving borrowing to totals near $100 billion in both years—up from less than $30 billion in 2023. Moody's said leveraged loans and high-yield bonds issued to support the activity came to $94 billion last year, noting that the added cost of the debt can weaken underlying companies, making it a credit negative. Last year, about $50 billion of the amount raised went to private-equity sponsors rather than being used to refinance existing debt, Moody's said.

A business development company affiliated with KKR & Co., KKR FS Income Trust, has joined the growing list of BDCs and interval funds to limit quarterly withdrawals to 5% of shares outstanding after receiving redemption requests totaling 6.3%, according to a regulatory filing Wednesday. The non-traded BDC plans to give shareholders about 80% of their requested amounts, on a pro-rata basis. While the BDC said it had received new investor commitments that exceeded the total requested withdrawals, it cited the need to balance the redemptions against the less-liquid nature of its assets.

Patria Investments has acquired investment firm WP Global Partners, which specializes in backing other managers' funds and making co-investments backing companies with enterprise values of less than $250 million. Patria agreed to pay about 1.7% of fee-earning assets managed by the Chicago-based firm plus cash earn-outs to be paid in 2029, subject to performance. The deal was expected to add roughly $1.8 billion to Nasdaq-listed Patria's private-markets fee-generating assets, bringing the total to around $13.3 billion as of the end of September.

Private-equity secondaries specialist FlowStone Partners has been acquired by insurance brokerage and advisory giant Willis Towers Watson, which sought to add access to private-markets secondary investments to its client offerings. The firm's FlowStone Opportunity Fund had net assets of about $767 million at the beginning of this year.

German buyout firm Mutares plans to raise as much as €105 million, or roughly $121.3 million, partly to finance a push into the U.S. market, where it already has a Chicago office. The Frankfurt-listed midmarket investor aims to sell up to 4,269,651 new shares, starting next week. About 80% of the new cash will go to the U.S. effort, with the rest put to expansion in Europe and burnishing the Munich-based firm's balance sheet. 

Apollo Global Management's Atlas SP Partners business development company, which got caught up in the collapse of London-based property finance firm Market Financial Solutions in February, contributed less to the investment returns of the New York asset manager's Athene insurance unit, Apollo reported Wednesday. Athene's commitment to a pooled investment vehicle returned about 7% for the first quarter, reflecting lower returns from Atlas and other lending vehicles, Apollo said in a securities filing. Overall, Apollo estimated alternative net investment pre-tax income came to $205 million for the period, or a roughly 6% return.

Lower midmarket-focused HCI Equity Partners in Washington is renaming itself as Oridian Capital Partners. The firm managed about $1.2 billion at the end of last year, a regulatory filing shows.

Broad indicators of private-credit health among business-development companies—such as returns, defaults and interest coverage—remain relatively intact, Megan Cheah reports for Dow Jones Newswires, citing a report from the asset-management arm of insurer Prudential Financial. Lending to software businesses by BDCs appears to be the key concern, with some estimating that software accounts for nearly 30% of their assets, the report said.

Send us your tips, suggestions and feedback. Write to:

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