Private equity portfolio concentration by sector, 2026

Key findings

• B2B Software holds 26% of the 3,915 portfolio companies with a classifiable sector, followed by Healthcare (18%) and Consumer (15%).
• 27 of the 80 firms with at least 10 classified portfolio companies have more than half of them in a single sector.
• The median firm in that group spans 5 sectors, and its largest sector is 45% of its classified portfolio.
• 5,303 of 9,218 portfolio companies (58%) carry no sector label we can classify and are left out of the shares.

Methodology

Source: the public portfolio pages of the 99 firms in PE Firm Index whose portfolios are mapped, as captured by the index on or before 2026-10-19. Each firm's profile links its portfolio page.

Each portfolio company is counted once per firm that lists it. A company held by two firms counts for both, because each firm chose it.

Sector labels are the firms' own. Each label is mapped to one of 11 sectors by the ordered keyword rules below: the first rule whose keyword appears in the label (the first part of a comma list) wins. Labels that name an asset class or nothing (for example 'Private Equity', 'Other', 'Real Assets') stay unclassified.

Concentration is measured on firms with at least 10 classified portfolio companies, as the largest sector's share and as a Herfindahl index.

Classified portfolio company

A company whose sector label maps to one of the 11 sectors.

Largest-sector share

The share of a firm's classified portfolio in its most common sector.

Herfindahl index

The sum of squared sector shares: 1.00 for one sector, lower when a portfolio is spread out.

Rule: Professional Services

keywords accounting, consulting, legal, law firm, professional services, compliance, audit

Rule: Business Services

keywords tech-enabled services, tech enabled services, outsourc, staffing, facility, facilities, marketing

Rule: Healthcare

keywords health, medical, med-tech, medtech, pharma, life science, bio, biotech, bioscience, clinical, dental, veterinar, hospital, patient

Rule: Financial Services

keywords financial, fintech, payment, banking, bank, insurance, wealth, asset management, lending, credit, capital markets

Rule: Education

keywords education, edtech, learning, school, training

Rule: Energy

keywords energy, power, renewable, oil, gas, petroleum, utilit, natural resources, solar, wind

Rule: Logistics

keywords logistic, transport, freight, supply chain, maritime, shipping, aviation services

Rule: Media

keywords media, publishing, content, entertainment, information services

Rule: Consumer

keywords consumer, retail, restaurant, food, beverage, franchise, beauty, personal care, hospitality, leisure, travel, fitness, ecommerce, e-commerce, pet, apparel, brand

Rule: B2B Software

keywords software, saas, technolog, tech, ai, data, cyber, security, cloud, internet, semis, compute, robotics, it services, digital, tmt, telecom, communications, enterprise

Rule: Industrials

keywords industrial, manufactur, aerospace, defense, defence, automotive, chemical, materials, construction, building, packaging, basic industries, engineering, machinery, infrastructure, distribution

Rule: Business Services

keywords business services, services, government

Limits

• Portfolio pages often mix current and exited companies; we count what the firm lists.
• Large firms with filtered or paged portfolio pages are captured in part, so their counts are floors.
• The index covers PE, growth and some venture firms that it lists; it is not the whole market and the shares describe the index, not the industry.
• 244 distinct labels did not map to a sector.