Welcome back. “There’s nothing like a good teacher,” my mother used to say. I was thinking of her words—and my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Smalls—while reading today’s lead story from my colleague Maria Armental.

Mrs. Smalls submitted one of my essays to a regional competition, which I won a few months later. It was the moment my writing ambitions actually felt possible.

Investment in that kind of impact is scaling up. A-Street, the Walton family-backed investor, has raised $675 million for education ventures. Joining the fund is the Lego Foundation, the charitable arm of the iconic toy maker.

Also in today’s news, the Journal reports that a group of asset managers, including Blackstone, General Atlantic and Hellman & Friedman, is eyeing a partnership with agentic AI developer Anthropic, with plans to deploy the startup's tools across their portfolio companies.

Now onto the news ...

A-Street, a multistage investor backed by the Walton family, has so far raised $675 million to invest in education, adding to its backers the Lego Foundation, a charitable group and part-owner of Danish toy maker Lego Group, Maria Armental reports for WSJ Pro. Marc Sternberg, co-founder and managing director, said A-Street plans to stick to its debut fund strategy of backing early- to late-stage U.S. companies tackling prekindergarten to 12th-grade educational issues. The firm, whose 2021 debut fund clinched $325 million, positions itself as a long-term investor, looking to hold investments for up to 15 years.

General Atlantic, Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman are among the private-equity firms in discussions with artificial intelligence technology developer Anthropic to back a project which involves a new venture with fund sponsors to sell AI tools to their portfolio companies, the Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter. Anthropic is in talks to raise $1 billion for the effort including $200 million it will kick in itself, the people said. The new company would serve as a consulting arm for Anthropic that teaches businesses how to incorporate the startup’s AI tools in their operations.

Blackstone and industrial investor Tinicum have clinched a nearly £1.28 billion, or $1.7 billion, deal to acquire and take private U.K. engineering services provider Senior with an offer to pay 300 pence a share, including a final dividend, a securities filing in London shows. The agreement gives the company an enterprise value of about £1.4 billion, or roughly 15.2 times the company's adjusted pre-tax profit last year. Senior supplies components and related services to the aerospace industry and clients in other sectors.

Canaan Partners and Bling Capital joined lead investor Khosla Ventures in a $350 million equity and debt growth investment in defense aviation company Hermeus, joined by others including Founders Fund. The company is moving its headquarters to El Segundo, Calif., from Atlanta, where it maintains a prototype production plant for its drone aircraft. The deal includes $200 million in equity and $150 million in debt and values the company at over $1 billion.

The capital management arm of Eldridge Industries is providing a $200 million equipment financing facility to Grey Rock Investment Partners-backed Conduit Power, a developer of natural gas and battery storage power generating projects for commercial and industrial customers. The deal supports the company's buildout of distributed projects totaling 200 megawatts of capacity.

First Reserve Management in Stamford, Conn., has acquired a majority interest in power grid equipment supplier Lindsey Systems, investing from its FR Evolution II fund. The Azusa, Calif., business makes high‑voltage transmission hardware including devices used in wildfire detection.

Sixth Street Partners affiliate Bay Collective, led by the head of global women's football at Sixth Street, is acquiring a majority interest in the U.K.'s Sunderland AFC Women. The deal makes Sunderland Bay Collective's second club after it invested in Bay FC of the U.S. National Women’s Soccer League. Sunderland AFC is retaining a minority interest in the women's club.

Growth investor BGF Investment Management is backing software company Fivium, a U.K.-based software provider. The funding will help the company scale its software-as-a-service platform and strengthen its go-to-market strategy.

Growth-focused Crux Capital has backed Ivybrook Academy, a half-day preschool with more than 70 schools open or in development. The company’s founders will retain a meaningful ownership stake and continue leading the company alongside the existing Ivybrook leadership team.

Knighthead Capital Management led a group that has acquired control of Latin-inspired packaged goods manufacturer and distributor Teasdale Foods in a transition that eliminated nearly $300 million of debt.

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

Gamut Capital Management has agreed to acquire interior construction contractor Acousti Engineering, including a majority stake held by Ardian in Paris. Ardian acquired the Orlando, Fla.-based business in 2020, investing through its North America Fund II alongside management of the family-owned company.

European investment managers EQT AB and Andera Partners have sold their stakes in clinical-stage biotechnology company Tubulis to strategic buyer Gilead Sciences, which is acquiring the German business for as much as $5 billion, as Colin Kellaher has reported for Dow Jones Newswires. Stockholm-based EQT led a €128 million, or $147.7 million, growth investment in Tubulis, investing through its EQT Life Sciences strategy in early 2024 alongside Nextech Invest and others. In 2022, Paris-based Andera led a €60 million growth investment in the company and participated in a €308 million round along with EQT and others last year.

Midmarket firm Agilitas Private Equity is selling Integris Composites to Triton Partners. Agilitas acquired Integris in 2020. The company provides lightweight armor used for personal protection and on land vehicles, aircraft and ships.

Blackstone closed its latest opportunistic credit fund with $10 billion, hitting its hard cap even as the private credit industry struggles to stem an outflow of investor capital amid concerns about artificial intelligence advances and sagging valuations, Nicholas G. Miller reports for the Journal. The New York private-equity manager said Blackstone Capital Opportunities Fund V had to turn away investors. Lou Salvatore, co-portfolio manager of the Capital Opportunities Funds, said the successful campaign reflects "continued strong institutional demand for private credit."

ArcLight Capital Partners in Boston has raised $3.9 billion and closed its ArcLight Infrastructure Partners Fund VIII, exceeding the firm's $3 billion target. ArcLight specializes in electric power, renewables, strategic gas and related infrastructure investments. The firm managed over $13.54 billion at the end of last year, a regulatory filing shows.

Specialist investor Carmel Partners has collected $1.35 billion for Carmel Partners Investment Fund 9 to back multi-family residential rental projects in areas such as California, New York, Boston and Washington. The San Francisco firm managed about  $7.98 billion at the end of last year, a regulatory filing shows.

Credit-focused King Street Capital Management has recruited Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund to serve as anchor investor in a credit fund to invest in the kingdom and in the Middle East-North Africa region. The New York firm aims to provide asset-based financing and other services to clients in the region.

Midmarket-focused H.I.G. Capital in Miami has tapped Brian Schwartz to succeed co-founder Sami Mnaymneh as chief executive, and Doug Berman has been promoted to co-president alongside Rick Rosen, replacing Schwartz as co-president. Mnaymneh moves to executive chairman alongside Tony Tamer, also a co-founder. The firm manages about $74 billion.

Beezer Clarkson is among the leaders of a group of Sapphire Partners professionals who are joining LGT Capital Partners next week, enhancing the Swiss firm's U.S. venture capital activities. Sapphire Partners is the fund investing arm of venture capital firm Sapphire Ventures, which manages more than $10 billion. The Sapphire Partners team has committed more than $1.2 billion through investments in over 200 funds. LGT has assets of over $110 billion in multiple strategies overseen by more than 900 professionals.

Specialist investor Round Hill Music in Nashville, Tenn., has named Chad Doerge as president and deputy chief executive, joining the firm after decades in investment banking, according to an emailed news release. He was most recently president of Aiera, a financial intelligence company.

Asset manager 500 Global has hired Nadia Karkar as a managing partner of the firm’s global investment team. Karkar joins from TPG Rise, the $31 billion impact investing strategy of TPG, where she most recently served as the head of business development.

Moody's Ratings has changed its outlook to negative from stable for business development companies after the sector saw net capital outflows for the first time during this year's first quarter. The New York-based credit evaluator cited increased redemption pressure in the non-traded BDCs and noted that publicly traded BDCs have maxed out on leverage, leaving them in what could become precarious circumstances. Individual investors sought to withdraw billions of dollars from some of the largest of the non-bank lenders to midmarket companies during the just-ended quarter on concern about threats posed to software providers by artificial intelligence technology as well as the valuations of some borrowers. Moody's said this year's shift to outflows from "very robust" inflows in last year's third quarter was very quick.

Egan-Jones Ratings has responded to negative headlines surrounding a recent Securities and Exchange filing. The regulator expressed skepticism regarding Egan’s application to expand its license to cover asset-backed securities and government securities. “We are confident in our qualifications, and view this as an important step in broadening our capabilities. We remain confident in the pathway forward,” Sean Egan, the company’s chief executive wrote in a Tuesday letter.

Equity index creator MSCI has acquired private markets data and analytics specialist PM Insights to advance its efforts to provide pricing information for privately held companies and assets available on secondary markets. Legally named ApeVue, the company's data is used by banks, brokers and asset managers.

Tikehau Capital in Paris is collaborating with the Brodsky Organization, a New York-based real estate developer, and aims to deploy more than $500 million in property financing in projects in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut area.

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