Welcome back. This morning our very own Chris Cumming brings news of a $4 billion U.S. midmarket fund from Ridgemont Equity Partners. Ridgemont was formed in 2010 as a spinout from Bank of America.

And our Wall Street Journal colleague Juliet Chung reports that Jeff Bezos' father is bolstering his family office, Aurora Borealis, with a new CEO, Valeria Alberola.

Read on for more details...

Ridgemont Equity Partners raised nearly $4 billion for its latest fund to buy U.S. midmarket companies, the private-equity firm said Wednesday, Chris Cumming writes. Ridgemont Equity Partners V closed at its upper limit of $3.975 billion, well above the initial target of $2.75 billion. The Charlotte, N.C., firm, which formed in 2010 as a spin-out from Bank of America, also easily surpassed the sum it raised for its fourth fund, which closed with $2.35 billion in 2022.

The father of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is expanding his family office to support more relations and manage a fortune estimated to be worth more than $40 billion, Juliet Chung reports for the Journal, citing people briefed on the effort and a document viewed by the newspaper. The office is called Aurora Borealis, according to one of the people, and recently hired Valeria Alberola as chief executive for the Miami-based operation.

Buyout firm KKR & Co., joined by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, is acquiring a 45% stake in energy company Sempra's infrastructure operation for $10 billion in cash, bringing the KKR-led group's interest in the unit to 65%, Nicholas G. Miller reports for the Journal. CPP Investments is paying $3 billion for an indirect 13% interest in the unit. The deal implies an enterprise value of $31.7 billion for Sempra Infrastructure Partners. The KKR-led group is paying 47% at closing and 41% of the total by the end of 2027. KKR has also agreed to invest in the second phase of a liquefied natural gas export terminal that Sempra Infrastructure Partners is building in Port Arthur, Texas, and which will require $12 billion in additional capital spending. Separately, Blackstone is leading a $7 billion investment in the second phase of the project through its credit and insurance strategy, giving the firm and a group of other investors a nearly 50% stake in phase two. KKR, Apollo Global Management and the alternatives arm of Goldman Sachs are participating in the Blackstone-led investment.

Private investors have invested some $400 million of equity in AI-driven legal technology company Filevine across two separate financing rounds over the past 15 months. Insight Partners led an initial investment 15 months ago and more recently the firm was joined by Accel and Halo Fund to co-lead a second larger transaction alongside Insight. Other existing backers that supported that deal include Meritech Capital, Stepstone, Run Ventures and Album Ventures.

Wellington Management and General Catalyst led a $400 million investment in health benefits technology provider Capital Rx that included a $252 million growth investment and the purchase of company securities. Other participants in the deal included Edison Partners, Generation Investment Management and the alternatives arm of Goldman Sachs. Along with the transaction, New York-based Capital Rx is rebranding as Judi Health.

Singapore's Temasek Holdings was among several lead investors in a $136 million growth transaction backing wholesale payment systems operator Fnality International. Most of the deal's participants were banks. The company is developing a blockchain-based global settlement network.

Trivest Partners has invested in DMI Direct Metals to build a portfolio company focused on construction hardware and fasteners, particularly those used in the roofing industry. The Fort Myers, Fla.-based company is Trivest’s eighth investment out of Trivest Fund VII, which closed in 2022 with $950 million.

Impact investor HCAP Partners is backing Salt Creek Capital's purchase of clinical laboratory services provider Real Diagnostics with an investment in the business. Also known as RealDx, the Reisterstown, Md.-based company works with doctors, nurses and clinics across 17 states.

Rochefort Asset Management led a $290 million growth investment in defense manufacturing startup Divergent Technologies in a deal that valued the company at $2.3 billion, Liz Young reports for the Journal's Logistics Report. The Torrance, Calif.-based company uses what it calls an end-to-end digital production system that designs and manufactures vehicle frames, suspension systems and missile parts using three-dimensional printers.

Invictus Capital Partners has joined with a unit of Moore Capital Management to invest in up to $500 million in new residential mortgages sourced by Invictus.

HighVista Strategies in Boston has closed a secondary deal that provided liquidity to venture-capital fund investors. The transaction involved seven HighVista funds and attracted over 40 potential bidders.

Lower midmarket firm Dubin Clark & Co. is backing Party Reflections, a Charlotte, N.C.-based event services company.

Kedaara Capital, an India-based strategic partner of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, worked with agentic artificial intelligence company Axtria to acquire equity held in the company by current and former employees through a secondary investment combined with a company buyback of shares. The Berkeley Heights, N.J.-based company whose backers include Bain Capital provides agentic AI programs and related services to drug developers and other life sciences companies.

Main Street Capital provided a $14 million mix of debt and equity to recapitalize Financial Risk Group alongside company managers. The Cary, N.C.-based company provides risk analytics and data management consulting services to clients.

Bregal Investments’ software-focused unit Bregal Milestone is backing financial technology company SkySparc with  a majority growth investment. The company's software is used in modernizing treasury, asset management and capital markets operations.

Technology-focused investment firm Accel-KKR has taken a majority stake in Arbiter, which provides athletic and school operations management software. Growth investor Serent Capital, which has backed the Sandy, Utah-based company since 2017, is retaining a minority stake.

BellTower Partners, a private-investment firm founded by former Carlyle Group Chief Executive Kewsong Lee, has invested in U.S. soccer organization The United Soccer League. As part of the deal, Lee will join the company’s board of directors as vice chair.

Debt and equity financing provider Backcast Partners is supporting the acquisition of a majority interest in Nomlas Ventures by Seneca Partners by structuring and securing company debt and warrants. Also known as Busmax, the Rome, Ga.-based company operates bus, van and car rental services across the Southeast.

Coatue Management, DST Global and Dell Technologies Capital were among participants in a $175 million growth investment in artificial intelligence services provider Distyl AI in a transaction that valued the company at about $1.8 billion. Based in San Francisco, Distyl works with businesses in the healthcare, telecommunications, insurance, manufacturing and financial services sectors.

Star Mountain Capital led a $25.1 million growth investment in telehealth company Caregility, joined by other investors including company management. The Wall Township, N.J.-based company's systems are used in 1,500 hospitals and over 75 health systems.

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

Regional specialist investor Maxburg in Munich is selling data and artificial intelligence consulting services provider Synvert to Japanese manufacturer Hitachi. The Münster, Germany-based company has more than 550 employees serving over 200 clients across Europe and the Middle East. Maxburg has backed the company for the past five years.

Blue Point Capital Partners has sold its interest in private-equity strategy consulting services provider Stax, which was acquired by Grant Thornton Advisors with support from New Mountain Capital. Blue Point first backed Boston-based Stax in 2021 and the company now has almost 300 employees.

Singapore asset manager Keppel and a related entity are jointly selling a majority stake in public-waste collector 800 Super to Actis at an enterprise value of more than 600 million Singapore dollars, or about $468 million. Actis said it and company Founder and Chief Executive William Lee are acquiring a 90% stake in the company, which Keppel had backed through its Keppel Asia Infrastructure Fund.

Buyout firm TPG has collected over $8.66 billion so far for its 10th flagship fund and parallel vehicles, according to a securities filing late Monday. The firm indicated that it had received an initial commitment to TPG Partners X in July and now has at least 63 investors. The firm set a $13 billion target for the new fund and plans to write checks of roughly $1 billion per deal. A predecessor fund closed on just over $12 billion.

The private assets platform of LBP AM, a joint venture of La Banque Postale and Aegon Asset Management, LBP AM European Private Markets has appointed Gabriele Perri as investment director in its capital solutions group, according to an emailed news release. He joins from Amundi's private equity operations.

Demopolis Equity Partners is adding Santo Cannone as a partner. He has been an advisor to the firm for several years.

Eldridge Industries-backed property developer and investor Cain International in London is working with Miami-based real-estate firm Oko Group to build One Beverly Hills, a $10 billion mixed-use project in the California city, Kate King reports for the Journal. The project includes a luxury hotel, condominiums and retail space. Todd Boehly-led Eldridge and Holne Investments founded and jointly own Cain, which managed about $5.67 billion in regulatory assets at the end of last year, according to an annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Patient death rates rose while emergency room staffing and pay levels fell at U.S. hospitals acquired in private-equity deals compared with others not held by PE firms, WSJ Pro's Ted Bunker reports for Dow Jones Newswires, citing a study published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Deaths in PE-controlled ERs rose over 13% from a raw baseline, while salary expenses fell 18%, according to an abstract of the study. The federally funded project by researchers at Harvard University, the University of Chicago and the University of Pittsburgh, examined outcomes at 49 private-equity backed institutions compared with 293 matched hospitals from 2009 to 2019. Researchers gathered data on more than 1 million patient visits and over 120,000 hospitalizations in intensive care units at the PE hospitals and nearly 6.2 million ER visits and over 760,000 ICU stays in the matched institutions.

A new report from Moody’s Ratings shows that recovery data for defaulted first-lien loans over the past 17 years have revealed a structural shift in the leveraged loan market. Covenant-lite loans now make up nearly all first-lien defaults, reflecting the disappearance of financial maintenance covenants. First-lien cov-lite loans recovered just 57% on average. Recovery outcomes were more driven by loan seniority and default type, such as distressed exchanges and going-concern restructurings, the agency found.

A total of 93 mergers and acquisitions were announced in Mexico this year through August, roughly 43% fewer than during the same period of last year, WSJ Pro's Luis Garcia reports for Dow Jones Newswires, citing 414 Capital, an investment bank in Mexico City. The value of this year’s deals, however, rose 5.7% to $12.18 billion from the $11.53 billion recorded a year earlier. Foreign buyers acquiring Mexican companies accounted for about a third, or 32%, of this year’s deals, while the acquisition by foreign buyers of local subsidiaries of international companies represented about 24%.

Private-equity firms must work “much harder” to secure money from their existing limited partners, Sebastian McCarthy writes for sister publication Private Equity News, citing an investor survey conducted by placement firm Rede Partners. The Rede Liquidity Index (RLI) for the first half of 2025 found that institutional investor sentiment had a score of 52 for new relationships, with a number above 50 indicating that investors plan to increase rather than decrease capital committed to new relationships. By contrast, the picture for existing relationships looks bleaker. With a score of 45, existing relationships remain firmly in negative territory, meaning more established general partners continue to struggle to land ‘re-ups’ from their current LP base.

Midmarket investment firm McCarthy Capital in Omaha, Neb., is renaming itself as M-One Capital. Founded in 1986, the firm specializes in backing current managers of the companies it invests in, particularly founders and family owners.

Partners Group in Switzerland has agreed to manage Deutsche Bank's inaugural evergreen private-markets fund, in collaboration with DWS, the bank's asset management arm. The new fund will be invested in private equity, private credit, infrastructure and real estate assets and will open to qualified investors in the European Economic Area and Switzerland by the end of this month.

Alternative investor Cliffwater has launched an evergreen private-equity index. The Cliffwater Evergreen Private Equity Index will look to advance investors’ understanding of return and risk for a rapidly growing asset class of funds directed toward high-net-worth investors. The wealth channel has embraced the evergreen funds as preferred vehicles for accessing private markets. Evergreens now hold $441 billion in net assets across private credit, real assets, private equity and other strategies, according to the asset manager.

Trinity Hunt Partners in Dallas has formed a healthcare advisory group, Acuvance, by combining six companies it has acquired since December 2023. The group offers clinical advisory, revenue cycle management and other services.

Canadian pension investor La Caisse has committed 250 million Canadian dollars, or roughly $180.9 million, to Pembroke Management as part of the organization legally named Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec's effort to support Québec-based firms. La Caisse aims to put C$8 billion in the hands of local asset managers by 2028.

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