Hard-asset fundraising tops credit for first time since early 2023

Stanger's first-half ledger counts $89.7 billion of alternative fundraising in the non-listed channel. That total is down 11% from a year earlier. Credit took in $32.4 billion. That is down 40% from a year earlier. Everything outside credit collected $57.4 billion. That was up 22%.

Stanger's HALO category — hard assets with low obsolescence, chiefly real estate and infrastructure — raised $28.2 billion through June. That is up 31%. Infrastructure drove the growth, with a 62% gain. Real estate rose 9%.

Second-quarter figures made the shift plain. HALO strategies raised $15.0 billion. That is up 42% from Q2 2025. Credit raised $12.2 billion. That was down 54%. Stanger said it was the first quarter since Q1 2023 in which hard assets out-raised credit. The quarter ended a twelve-quarter stretch with credit on top.

Credit's problems sit mainly in business development companies. Public and private BDCs together raised $4.8 billion in Q2. That was 69% less than the same quarter last year.

The product mix is shifting as well. Private placement vehicles raised $20.9 billion in Q2. Public programs raised $19.6 billion. Private placements accounted for 52% of total fundraising. A year earlier, the share was 39%.

The rotation between credit and hard assets is the benchmark for interval and tender-offer funds competing for adviser allocations in the same registered market. The money that left credit did not leave alternatives; it moved to hard assets. Sponsors of credit-heavy interval vehicles are raising into the weaker side. Sponsors with infrastructure or real estate strategies in semi-liquid form are raising into the stronger side.

Private placements complicate that story. A private vehicle now accounts for more than half of quarterly flow. It carries no semi-liquidity promise. Interval funds are not obsolete; the redemption feature still matters to advisers whose clients want a controlled exit. But the fundraising data says the semi-liquid pitch has to work harder against simpler private structures.

Whether BDC fundraising holds near that $4.8 billion quarterly pace or slides further will show up in the Q3 ledger. For wholesalers, the first-half split offers a clean shelf story: credit fell 40%. Everything else rose 22%. The side a product sits on decides the pitch.