Competition

Competitors describe Hamilton Lane Incorporated's market in their own filings and calls. These verified passages and visual pages show where their strategies meet, using source documents preserved in Sources.

StepStone Group Inc. (STEP)

Private-markets solutions manager with the same core model as Hamilton Lane — separately managed accounts, commingled/specialized funds, secondaries, advisory, a fast-growing private-wealth evergreen suite and a proprietary data platform. Its closest listed analog.

StepStone's head of strategy frames a three-year industry-wide slump in distributions and fundraising, then sets StepStone's own ~$30bn-a-year fundraising against it — the firm's claim to be taking share in the same private-markets fundraising pool Hamilton Lane draws from.

Michael McCabe (Head of Strategy): While private market returns have stayed strong, distributions have been low for three consecutive years, shifting client focus from IRR to DPI. Slower exits have led to fundraising declines industry-wide, and 2025 could see another down year unless fundraising picks up in Q4. StepStone's results, however, stand out, raising nearly $30 billion annually over the last two years, a significant jump from previous years. We credit this growth to our client-focused customized approach and our data-driven insights as a major market participant.

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StepStone's push into private wealth and retirement: a private-equity interval fund (STPEX) sold by ticker that drew over $700m in 30 days, and a mandate as one of five managers in an Aviva U.K. defined-contribution pension scheme — the same evergreen and wealth-channel ground Hamilton Lane is building on.

Scott Hart (CEO): We constructed STPEX to address the requests of several channel partners, leading to over $700 million in gross subscriptions in the first 30 days. This is an incredible result that frankly exceeded our own expectations. While subscriptions will moderate after this initial surge, we expect STPEX to become a significant source of private wealth inflows. […] Last month, we were thrilled to announce a partnership with Aviva to be one of five specialist managers in its U.K. trust-based pension scheme. We believe this solidifies the StepStone name as a trusted partner in private markets for retirement savings, a trend we expect to develop globally.

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StepStone's private-wealth and fee-earning-AUM scoreboard — a ~$18bn evergreen platform, a record ~$40bn of undeployed fee-earning capital, and a stated 21% organic growth rate since fiscal 2021 — the growth benchmark against Hamilton Lane's own evergreen build-out.

Michael McCabe (Head of Strategy): Turning to our evergreen funds. We generated over $2.3 billion of subscriptions in our private wealth suite of offerings, growing the platform to nearly $18 billion as of the end of the quarter. […] we increased our undeployed fee-earning capital, or UFC, by $7 billion to roughly $40 billion, our highest level ever. […] The combination of fee-earning assets plus UFC grew to over $184 billion, which is up more than $12 billion sequentially and is up over $38 billion from a year ago, our strongest year of growth in our history. This translates to a 21% annual organic growth rate since fiscal 2021.

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GCM Grosvenor Inc. (GCMG)

Open-architecture private-markets and absolute-return solutions provider built on customized separate accounts, specialized funds, co-investments/secondaries and advisory — increasingly targeting individual investors. A direct solutions competitor to Hamilton Lane.

GCM Grosvenor's FY2025 annual report sizes the 'democratization of alternatives' — individuals allocating under 5% to alternatives versus 20-25% for institutions, framed as a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity — and ties it to rising demand for co-investments and secondaries, the same wealth and direct-investment vectors Hamilton Lane pursues.

Individual investors, which we define as high-net-worth individuals, the mass affluent and retail investors, represent a significant growth opportunity for us and for alternative investment managers. Currently, those investors are significantly under-allocated to alternative investments compared to institutional investors. According to Bain Global’s 2023 Private Equity Report, individual investors allocate less than 5% of their total portfolios to alternatives, compared to institutional investor portfolios, such as public pension plans and sovereign wealth funds, which allocated 20-25% of their portfolios to alternatives on average. […] As education efforts increase and offerings evolve, we anticipate substantial growth in individual allocations to alternatives over the coming years — creating a multi-trillion-dollar market opportunity for the industry. […] Within investors’ alternative allocations, investors are increasingly adopting direct-oriented investments, such as co-investments and secondaries to decrease overall costs, reduce the J-curve, and enhance alpha generation.

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GCM Grosvenor's president describes carrying its institutional customized-separate-account model into the wealth channel through white-label solutions (~$1bn across 11 mandates) — a direct analog to Hamilton Lane's customized-account and private-wealth strategy.

Jonathan Levin (President): We've long believed that the differentiation that's made us successful in the institutional market, serving as a customized separate account partner, would translate well in the individual investor channel. And we're seeing that thesis play out. Over the past two years, we've raised almost a billion dollars across 11 white-label solutions in the wealth channel. We believe these customized solutions will be a meaningful contributor to our growth in this channel going forward alongside everything we're doing from a product standpoint.

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P10, Inc. (PX)

Multi-strategy private-markets solutions firm (private equity, venture, credit, impact) reaching institutions and the RIA/wealth channel via primaries, secondaries and co-investment — a smaller but direct solutions competitor to Hamilton Lane.

P10's CEO argues the lower- and middle-market segment it focuses on is larger and less crowded than the mega-cap sponsors — ~1,000 GPs managing ~$3trn — the small-manager end of the private markets Hamilton Lane also allocates into for clients.

Luke A. Sarsfield (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer): First, we firmly believe that our market opportunity is both larger and less competitive than the large sponsor market segment, and the data we've provided in our earnings presentation clearly supports this assertion. […] One, our opportunity set has approximately 1,000 GPs managing approximately $3 trillion, more than 5x the number of GPs at the upper end of the market. Two, if you drill down into the opportunity set for the smaller managers, those in the middle and lower middle market have more than 10x the number of companies on which to focus relative to managers in the larger part of the market.

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P10's fundraising and secondaries scorecard — $4.3bn raised and deployed year-to-date (+48%), a secondaries fund (RCP Secondary Fund V) closing at $1.26bn in 13 months, and wealth managers crossing into that fund for the first time — overlapping Hamilton Lane's secondaries and private-wealth franchises.

Luke A. Sarsfield (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer): In the first three quarters of 2025, we raised and deployed $4.3 billion of organic fee-paying assets under management, an increase of 48% when compared to the capital raised in the same period of 2024. […] During the quarter, we had 17 commingled funds in the market. RCP's Secondary Fund V closed at $1.26 billion, exceeding our target of $1 billion. We've seen strong demand for our secondaries products, and this fund was no exception. We closed Secondary Fund V in 13 months. The predecessor, Secondary Fund IV was $797 million and took 25 months to close. […] We recently saw several wealth managers who were invested across our private credit and venture capital strategies commit to RCP's latest secondaries fund for the first time.

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Blackstone Inc. (BX)

The largest alternative-asset manager. Not a solutions firm, but the market-defining competitor in two arenas Hamilton Lane is growing into: private-wealth perpetual/semi-liquid vehicles for individuals, and secondaries (Strategic Partners).

Blackstone's stated scale in private wealth — a ~$290bn platform it says holds an estimated 50% share of private-wealth revenue among nine major alternative firms (citing Goldman Sachs research) — the dominant incumbent in the individual-investor channel Hamilton Lane is entering.

Jonathan Gray (President and COO): Turning to private wealth, where our platform has grown to nearly $290 billion, as I mentioned, up threefold in the past 5 years. To put our scale in perspective, a recent Goldman Sachs research report highlighted that Blackstone has an estimated 50% share of all private wealth revenue among 9 major alternative firms. To put our momentum in perspective, we raised over $11 billion in the channel in the third quarter, more than double year-over-year, to the highest level in over 3 years. […] BXP raised $2.1 billion in the third quarter, bringing its NAV to $15 billion in only 7 quarters.

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Blackstone's own sizing of the private-wealth opportunity — a '$140 trillion' channel in which it calls itself 'by far the largest private wealth alternative platform in the world,' with perpetual-vehicle revenue topping $700m in the quarter — the market-leader's view of the channel Hamilton Lane competes for.

Jonathan D. Gray (President and COO): In this vast channel, $140 trillion, including mass affluent and high-net-worth individuals, a new generation of investors is gaining access to the benefits of alternatives, which is a development led by Blackstone. We started raising private wealth capital 23 years ago and established a dedicated organization nearly 15 years ago, growing AUM to almost $280 billion today, by far the largest private wealth alternative platform in the world. […] Revenue from these vehicles exceeded $700 million in the second quarter alone compared to approximately $50 million in the same quarter 5 years ago.

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Blackstone sizes its Strategic Partners secondaries business at $91bn (doubled in five years) with a new private-equity secondaries flagship targeting $22bn-plus — the scale of the secondaries market in which Hamilton Lane's specialized funds compete.

Jonathan D. Gray (President and COO): In our $91 billion secondaries business, which has doubled in the last 5 years, we raised additional capital for our fourth infrastructure vehicle, bringing it to over $5 billion, nearly 40% larger than the prior vintage. And we launched fundraising for our new PE secondaries flagship, targeting at least the size of the prior $22 billion fund with the first close expected in the fourth quarter.

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Ares Management Corporation (ARES)

Credit-led alternative manager that collides with Hamilton Lane in the private-wealth channel (semi-liquid/perpetual products), secondaries (Ares Secondaries, ex-Landmark), infrastructure and private credit.

Ares claims a top-five position and ~10% share of the wealth channel, with $50bn across eight semi-liquid products and $167bn of perpetual capital (about half its fee-paying AUM) — quantifying a wealth-distribution platform that competes with Hamilton Lane's evergreen funds.

Michael J. Arougheti (CEO): In the wealth channel, we continue to benefit from our top 5 leadership position with an estimated market share approaching 10%. Our momentum remains strong with our fundraising for the first half of the year totaling $7 billion in equity commitments, a 54% increase over the first half of 2024. AUM across our eight semi liquid products crossed $50 billion […] Our perpetual capital AUM now stands at $167 billion and represents nearly half of our total fee-paying AUM.

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Ares' FY2025 10-K sizes its multi-asset Secondaries Group at $42.1bn across private equity, real estate, infrastructure and credit — the diversified secondaries footprint that overlaps Hamilton Lane's secondaries strategy.

Our Secondaries Group invests in secondary markets primarily in North America and across a range of alternative asset class strategies, including private equity, real estate, infrastructure and credit. As of December 31, 2025, our team manages $42.1 billion of AUM in over 90 funds. […] our private equity secondaries team of more than 40 investment professionals managed $22.1 billion of AUM in over 40 funds and related co-investment vehicles.

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The Carlyle Group Inc. (CG)

Global alternative manager whose AlpInvest arm — secondaries, primary fund investments, co-investment and portfolio finance — is the closest structural analog among the mega-GPs to Hamilton Lane's specialized funds and customized accounts; also a private-wealth competitor.

Carlyle's CEO frames AlpInvest as one of only a few secondaries 'hyperscalers,' spanning secondaries, co-investments, primary fund investments and portfolio finance — a description of a full private-markets solutions platform that maps closely onto Hamilton Lane's own multi-strategy model.

Harvey Mitchell Schwartz (CEO): As John pointed out, there are only a few hyperscalers in this business, and we are one of them. Being a hyperscaler means having 25 years of experience, and we celebrated our 25th anniversary of AlpInvest in Amsterdam this year. […] It’s often simplified to just secondaries, but it encompasses secondaries, co-investments, primary offerings on our platform, and portfolio finance. This is where we find our unique advantage. Our business is evolving into one that offers corporate finance solutions, not just secondaries.

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Carlyle reports AlpInvest fee-related earnings up more than 80% year-to-date, a record $20bn secondaries fund, and evergreen wealth inflows running ~10x higher at $3bn a quarter — the secondaries-plus-wealth engine that competes with Hamilton Lane.

Harvey Schwartz (CEO): In Carlyle AlpInvest, the team continues to deliver exceptional growth with FRE more than 80% year-to-date. Last month, we closed our largest-ever secondaries fund of $20 billion, further scaling the business. […] we were attracting about $300 million per quarter in evergreen wealth inflows. Today, we're running at 10x that level at $3 billion of inflows, our best fundraising quarter in Global Wealth ever.

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Competition

StepStone Group Inc. (STEP)

GCM Grosvenor Inc. (GCMG)

P10, Inc. (PX)

Blackstone Inc. (BX)

Ares Management Corporation (ARES)

The Carlyle Group Inc. (CG)

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