The Private Equity Benchmark Report: 2026 Edition

Why read this report

Affinity analyzed platform data from over 300 private equity firms to benchmark how they source, communicate, and build the relationships behind their deals. In this report, you'll see:

01. Where you actually stand. Per-firm benchmarks reported as a full range around the median, so you can locate your own firm instead of comparing to a single average.

‍02. What relationship data reveals. The relationship work under sourcing (how much of your network is active, and who holds it), measured for the first time.

‍03. Where your headroom is. The metrics with the widest spread are where firms differ most, and where there's the most room to improve.

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Introduction—Find your line

In 2026, private equity is being run against one number: Distributed to Paid-In Capital (DPI). Limited partners (LPs) want realized returns, exits are selective, and firms are placing fewer, larger, higher-conviction bets. In that environment the network is the edge. It's the proprietary paths to assets, the intermediaries, and the strategic buyers who force liquidity. And yet relationships are the one thing firms have never been able to benchmark.

You can benchmark a PE firm on almost anything, including fund size, deal count, dry powder, or time to close. The work underneath all of it has stayed invisible. How active is your team, really? How much of the network you've built is actually doing anything? If your most-connected partner walked out tomorrow, how much of the firm would go with them?

This report puts a number, and a range, to each of those questions, drawn from more than 300 private equity firms that use Affinity. The spread is the finding. Firms communicate at strikingly similar volumes. There's barely a 2x gap from the quietest quarter of firms to the busiest. But when it comes to turning relationships into introductions, or activating the network, firms differ by 4x or more. Most firms look alike on effort and nothing alike on output. This report is about finding out which one you are.
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$3.8 Trillion

Global un-exited private equity portfolio value in 2026. With exit volumes remaining near multi-year lows and LPs prioritizing DPI above all else, systematic deal activation is the primary lever to unlock liquidity.

— Bain & Company, Global Private Equity Report 2026

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Chapter 1—How active is your firm?

Activity is the baseline. It's the raw tempo of a firm before it sources, connects, or closes anything. These are the most uniform benchmarks in the report, and most firms cluster close together, making them the easiest place to confirm you're in a normal range before the more revealing metrics later.

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The typical PE user sends and receives 1,087 emails a month. But the band is tight. The busiest firms' users run barely twice the volume of the quietest, which makes email the most uniform benchmark here. Across ten quarters the median held in a narrow band between 930 and 1,087. Firms tend to settle into a communication rhythm and keep it.

‍Read yours: Total monthly email ÷ people on your deal team. Above 1,087 is the more communication-intensive half of the industry, while below 692 is the bottom quarter. A team below the median isn't necessarily doing less, but activity that isn't captured can't be surfaced, routed, or acted on.

Method: monthly median over metric-active firms; period-consistent distribution.

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While the typical PE user adds 36 new contacts a month, the top quarter adds more than 66, nearly triple the bottom quarter. Growth pace varies more than email because adding contacts is bursty. Firms bring in names in waves around conferences, fund cycles, and intermediary sprints, so any single month is noisy and the band is wider than it looks. The rate has held in the mid-30s across the window. Early network-building has given way to steady maintenance.

Read yours: New contacts ÷ people on your team, over a few months, not one. A steady rate near 36 is a firm maintaining its network, while a consistently higher one is still building. Growth only pays off if those names get used. A high add-rate with low activation (Chapter 2) means the network is expanding faster than it's working.

Method: monthly median over metric-active firms; period-consistent distribution. Bursty by nature. Read the band as a range, not a target.

Chapter 2—How hard is your network working?

Activity and output aren't the same thing. A firm can email constantly and add names every week while most of its network sits untouched. These are the widest-spreading benchmarks in the report. Where firms look most alike on activity, they look most different here. This is where a firm learns whether its network is an asset or an archive.

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The typical PE user makes 18 introductions a month, the widest-spreading of the three activity benchmarks. The top quarter clears 33 while the bottom quarter makes fewer than eight, a roughly 4x range. Firms email at similar rates but connect people at wildly different ones, which makes this the sharpest find-your-line metric in the franchise. And it's rising: the median climbed steadily from 11.9 to 18.0 across the window. It's the one core activity metric with a clear upward direction.

Read yours: Monthly introductions ÷ people on your deal team. Under eight is bottom-quartile, 18 is typical, and clearing 33 puts you among the most active connectors in the industry. In a market starved for exits, introductions are how portfolio companies meet strategic buyers and diligence calls get set. A firm trailing the median usually has the network and is simply underusing it.
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Method: monthly median over metric-active firms; period-consistent distribution. An introduction is counted per recipient pair (one intro email to three people counts as two). Coverage-robust.
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The typical PE firm turns about a third of its tracked relationships (33.9%) into introductions. This is the metric with the widest spread in the report. The top quarter activate more than 61% of their network while the bottom quarter activate under 15%. This is a 4x range. Two-thirds of firms fall between "barely activating the network" and "activating most of it."

This is also where most firms have the most room to grow. The relationships are already there. The top quarter just surfaces and acts on them as a habit. When you're when you're up against a bigger fund's check size, the warm path you can pull up in seconds is the counterweight for the firms that reach for it every time.

Read yours: Relationships you've introduced into ÷ total relationships tracked.

Method: per-firm median across firms with ≥1,000 emails in-window; all-firms basis (no efficiency quartiles). n = 376. No caveats.

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Chapter 3—Who holds your firm together?

Since a network is never held evenly, some people carry far more of it than others. It's usually more than anyone realizes. This chapter is about concentration: how much of the firm's connective tissue runs through its most-connected people, and what that means for continuity.

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If your most-connected partner left tomorrow, how much of the firm would walk out with them? For the typical PE firm, that number is close to a third. One person sits at the center of a median 31% of the firm's strong relationships, and the top three hold 72% between them. Even the least concentrated quarter of firms has one person holding a fifth of all strong ties, while the most concentrated hold nearly half. It's the natural shape of how relationship-driven firms grow. The partners who've built networks longest hold the most, and it compounds around them.
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The pattern is also stubborn. Draw the line for a "strong" relationship more strictly or more loosely and the concentration barely moves. The network runs through the same few people no matter where you set the bar.

Read yours: What share of your strongest relationships sits with your single most-connected person, and with your top three. Above 44% in one person is among the most concentrated, and below 20% is among the most distributed. The point is to know the number before a departure, a retirement, or a competitor's offer turns it into a continuity question.
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Method: derived from Affinity's relationship-strength model (a governed staging layer). A "strong relationship" is a modeled strength of 0.70 or higher—Affinity's own definition of a strong tie. Solo and two-person shops excluded.

What the benchmarks say together

Read as a set, the benchmarks tell one story in three parts.

1. Firms look alike on effort. Email volume and contact growth cluster tightly, as most firms are within roughly 2x of each other. Ask the activity metrics how you compare and they'll mostly say "normal."

‍2. Firms look nothing alike on output. The moment the question shifts from how much a firm does to how much of its network actually works, the spread quadruples. Introductions and activation both vary ~4x. The typical firm activates about a third of what it tracks, and most firms are sitting on far more latent reach than they use. This is where the real differences live, and where the headroom is.

3. The network runs through a few people. One person holds ~31% of the typical PE firm's strong relationships, and three hold ~72%. It's the natural result of how relationship-driven firms grow, and a continuity exposure most firms have never quantified.

The through-line: firms have spent years building networks and communicating at high, uniform volumes. But how much of that network is working, and who holds it, has stayed invisible. You can't manage or deploy a network until you can actually see it.

"The typical PE firm activates about a third of its tracked relationships.
The rest is headroom." (33.9%)

Drive stronger returns with Affinity

Affinity combines relationship intelligence, deal data, and AI to make the invisible parts of your network visible, so the benchmarks in this report become levers you can pull.

• See who holds the firm together. Map relationship strength across the team and know your key-person exposure before it becomes a continuity problem.
• Put your whole network to work. Surface the relationships waiting to be used and the strongest path to any introduction, so more of what you've built converts into sourcing, diligence, and exits.
• Source and support on relationships, not guesswork. Bring every signal into one current view the whole team acts on.

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About our data

The Affinity platform data in this report is aggregated and anonymized. It represents the dealmaking activity of more than 300 private equity firms that use Affinity. Figures are medians, reported as monthly rates over metric-active firms, across January 2024 – Q2 2026. Each benchmark shows a distribution (bottom quartile, median, top quartile) computed on a period-consistent basis, so the median reflects the typical firm rather than an outlier-inflated average. Firms that have opted out of research use of their data are excluded from all figures.

Key-person concentration is derived from Affinity's relationship-strength model, a governed staging layer, where a "strong" relationship is a modeled strength of 0.70 or higher. These are modeled measures; we report them as such and don't overstate their precision. An introduction is counted per recipient pair (one intro email to three people counts as two).

The analysis here is aggregate and anonymized. Affinity does not use customer data to train large language models or other AI.

The information in this report is provided for general informational purposes only. While efforts have been made to ensure its accuracy, no warranties or representations are made regarding the completeness or reliability of the content. Project Affinity, Inc. is not liable for any losses or damages arising from the use of this report. This report does not constitute professional advice. For specific concerns, consult a qualified expert.