Carlyle Group (NASDAQ:CG) used a shareholder event to outline what executives described as “enormous positive momentum” across the firm, highlight record 2025 results, and set multi-year financial and fundraising targets through 2028. Senior leaders also detailed strategy shifts made over the last three years, including a greater emphasis on wealth distribution, integrated credit and insurance solutions, and expanded use of artificial intelligence across investment and operating functions.
Schwartz highlights three-year transformation and record 2025 performance
Chief Executive Officer Harvey Schwartz said the firm’s changes since he joined as CEO centered on three guiding principles: creating a strategic growth plan tied closely to client needs; evaluating and reshaping the operating model, including expense actions and eliminating underperforming lines; and making leadership and organizational design changes. Schwartz noted the firm recently appointed three co-presidents—Mark Jenkins, Jeff Nedelman, and John Redett—along with Lindsay LoBue as COO and Justin Plouffe as CFO.
Schwartz said capital returned to shareholders increased 70% over several years through dividends and share repurchases while the firm also invested in growth initiatives.
New 2028 targets: FRE, margins, inflows, and DE per share
Schwartz laid out targets through the end of 2028, describing them as a bottoms-up build that assumes 100% organic growth, without significant strategic transactions or partnerships.
- Fee-related earnings: $1.9 billion by 2028 (15% compound growth)
- Management fees: $2.8 billion+
- FRE margin: 50%
- Cumulative inflows: $200 billion from 2026–2028
- DE per share: $6 or more
Schwartz said the firm sees operational leverage in the plan and “upside” beyond what was modeled, while also acknowledging potential risks. He emphasized Carlyle’s global footprint, long-standing local presence in major regions, and diversified platform as advantages, and said the firm has organized around three priorities: delivering exceptional investment performance, scaling platform advantages, and accelerating high-growth opportunities.
Client business and wealth: inflows, retirement focus, and distribution build-out
Jeff Nedelman, co-president and head of the Global Client business, said the firm’s strategy “begins and ends” with clients and solutions, describing a shift from a single-product sales approach to a multi-product, client-centric model. He said global wealth has been integrated “into the heart of the platform,” supported by talent hires and a redesigned wealth strategy led by Shane Clifford, hired in 2023.
Nedelman said Carlyle has 32 limited partners across 87 countries and added 450 new limited partners in the last three years, while 250 existing limited partners expanded into multiple strategies. He also said the firm has developed more than 200 wealth distribution relationships. On capital sourcing from 2023 to 2025, he cited $110 billion from the Americas, $24 billion from APAC, $15 billion from Europe, and $9 billion from MENA.
For 2025, Nedelman reported $54 billion raised versus an internal $40 billion target, and said the firm raised capital across 30 strategies over the last three years. Looking ahead, he said the firm is targeting $200 billion+ of inflows by 2028, with a mix he described as $50 billion from Global Private Equity, $90 billion from Global Credit & Insurance, and $60 billion from AlpInvest.
Nedelman also emphasized “where the puck is going” in wealth distribution: retirement (which he described as a $44 trillion total addressable market), RIAs, and family offices. He said Carlyle is targeting $40 billion of wealth evergreen inflows from 2026–2028, more than three times the $12 billion raised in the prior three-year period, and noted the expansion of evergreen offerings from three to nine products and growth in dedicated wealth professionals from 46 to more than 110.
Credit, private equity, AlpInvest: platform scale, performance, and “super cycle” fundraising
Mark Jenkins, co-president responsible for Global Credit & Insurance, said the credit platform has over $211 billion of AUM, with nearly half of capital described as perpetual. He said the platform deployed over $30 billion in the past year and covers a wide credit spectrum—from CLOs and broadly syndicated loans to direct lending, opportunistic and hybrid capital, infrastructure and real asset credit, and asset-backed finance. Jenkins framed private credit as an opportunity set exceeding $25 trillion, versus what he called a traditional $2 trillion view, and said Carlyle’s AUM represents less than 1% penetration of that market.
Jenkins said fee revenue in Global Credit grew at a 17% CAGR over the past three years and fee-related earnings nearly doubled, growing about 34% CAGR, which he tied to operating leverage and prior investments in infrastructure, technology, and talent. He said the segment is targeting just over $90 billion of inflows over the next three years, citing expansion in areas such as asset-backed finance, direct lending, opportunistic credit, and growth in Asia and Europe.
John Redett, co-president, described Global Private Equity (corporate private equity and real assets) as a scaled and profitable business with roughly $165 billion of AUM and portfolio companies employing 700,000 people globally. He said the firm’s returns in global private equity are driven largely by value creation and that the days of multiple-expansion-driven returns are “largely behind us.” He cited performance metrics including a 29% gross IRR in U.S. corporate private equity, 26% IRR for corporate private equity globally, and 17% IRR in real assets, and highlighted realization activity, including $18 billion returned to investors in 2025 and $7.5 billion closed or pending in early 2026. He also cited IPOs including StandardAero, Rigaku, Hexaware, and Medline, describing Medline as the largest ever sponsor-backed IPO and largest ever healthcare IPO.
Redett said the firm expects $50 billion of private equity flows over the next three years, up 70% from the prior three years, describing it as a “super fundraising cycle.” He also highlighted Carlyle AlpInvest as a “liquidity solutions provider” with over $100 billion AUM and said it has been growing organically. Redett cited AlpInvest management fee growth of nearly 40% CAGR over the last three years and FRE up nearly fourfold in that period, with AlpInvest increasing from 8% to 22% of firm-wide FRE. He said the firm is targeting $60 billion of flows for AlpInvest over the next three years.
AI adoption and productivity: internal tools, data scale, and underwriting applications
In an AI panel led by COO Lindsay LoBue with CIO Lúcia Soares and Chief Digital Officer Matt Anderson, executives said Carlyle began building data science capabilities years before generative AI became widely adopted. Soares said Carlyle was the first private markets asset manager to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise for employees and reported 90% adoption in nine months, with a 213% increase in tool usage more recently. She said more than 50 AI solutions are deployed across the firm and that 65% of technology investments are focused on improving how deal and sales teams operate.
Anderson said Carlyle has been accumulating and structuring investment data for years, describing growth from about 72 terabytes covering 11,000 companies in 2020 to 62 petabytes, and referenced data on 30,000 companies and 11 million data points. The panel discussed using AI for diligence and underwriting workflows and described an asset-backed finance tool that can ingest and analyze more than 100,000 loans per tape and reduce a process that previously took one to two days to about 15 minutes. Executives also discussed using AI in portfolio companies, including through partnerships with enterprise AI-native firms and leadership forums.
Plouffe outlines financial outlook, balance sheet position, and expanded buyback authorization
CFO Justin Plouffe tied the day’s strategy discussion to the firm’s three-year financial outlook. He said fee revenues grew 10% in 2025, with management fees up 9% in Global Credit and up 37% in AlpInvest, and noted transaction fees have nearly tripled over the last couple of years. He reiterated the firm’s 20% FRE CAGR over the last three years and 1,000-basis-point margin improvement, and said FRE has become more diversified, with global credit and AlpInvest rising from 34% of FRE three years ago to 55% today.
Plouffe also emphasized the balance sheet, citing $2 billion of cash versus $2.6 billion of debt, over $3 billion of investments, and $2.9 billion of net accrued performance revenues expected to flow through over the next three to four years. He said the balance sheet represents $15 per share of value to investors. Looking ahead, he reiterated targets including $1.9 billion in FRE, $200 billion of fundraising, $2.8 billion in management fees, margin above 50%, and DE per share above $6 by 2028, while noting revenue growth would likely be more muted in 2026 before accelerating in 2027 and 2028 due to fundraising timing.
On capital return, Plouffe said the board approved a new $2 billion share repurchase authorization in addition to an existing authorization, and Schwartz said the firm prefers to remain “capital light” while balancing reinvestment and shareholder returns.
About Carlyle Group (NASDAQ:CG)
The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG) is a global alternative asset manager that invests across a range of strategies including private equity, real assets (such as real estate and infrastructure), global credit, and investment solutions. Founded in 1987 and headquartered in Washington, DC, Carlyle raises and manages investment funds that acquire, operate and exit companies and assets on behalf of institutional and private investors. The firm is publicly traded on the Nasdaq exchange and operates as an asset manager and investment advisor rather than as an operating company.
Carlyle’s core activities include sourcing and executing private equity buyouts and growth investments, originating and managing credit and financing solutions, and acquiring and operating real asset portfolios.
