September 12, 2025
Asset-based finance (ABF) and asset-based lending (ABL) are rapidly moving from niche strategies to core pillars of private credit and private equity. Once seen as specialized lending, ABF has become one of the fastest growing areas of alternative investments, offering attractive risk adjusted returns, strong downside protection, and portfolio diversification beyond traditional corporate cashflow lending.
The drivers are clear. Post-financial crisis regulations such as Dodd Frank and Basel III forced banks to scale back on certain lending activities, while the 2023 U.S. banking turmoil and rising deposit costs accelerated their retreat from non-core businesses. This created a financing gap, and private credit firms have been quick to step in.
The opportunity is massive. The global asset-based finance market already exceeds $6 trillion and is projected to hit $9.2 trillion by 2029. Yet private markets currently account for only about four percent penetration, leaving an enormous runway for managers with the expertise to underwrite, structure, and monitor complex transactions.
It is no surprise that some of the world’s largest platforms, from KKR to Carlyle to Apollo, are doubling down on ABF. Below we highlight ten of the most notable asset-based finance deals of 2025 and examine how this strategy is reshaping the future of private credit.
KKR raised $6.5 billion for its second ABF fund and related accounts, targeting consumer loan portfolios and infrastructure assets.
KKR also acquired a large consumer loan portfolio from Harley-Davidson, part of a strategy now representing ~$75 billion of KKR’s AUM dedicated to ABF.
Carlyle closed a $2 billion financing with Diversified Energy Co., securitising cash flows from mature U.S. oil and gas fields.
Carlyle teamed up with Citi to provide asset-backed financing solutions for fintech lenders, underscoring how ABF is powering digital credit expansion.
Sixth Street struck a multi-year agreement with Affirm to purchase up to $4 billion in consumer installment loans from its “buy now, pay later” portfolio.
PGIM completed a $500 million purchase of Affirm’s asset-backed loans, further validating ABF’s role in fintech.
Meta secured a $29 billion financing package for data center expansion — $26 billion in debt led by PIMCO and $3 billion in equity from Blue Owl — backed by digital infrastructure cash flows.
Elon Musk’s AI venture, xAI, raised a $5 billion asset-backed loan as part of a $12 billion debt-equity raise for its Colossus 2 supercomputing data center. The collateral: up to one million Nvidia GPUs, hardware, and AI IP.
Blackstone, alongside Santander, acquired a $1 billion portfolio of infrastructure loans, expanding ABF exposure in global infrastructure.
Apollo and BNP Paribas launched the Atlas SP platform with a $5 billion initial commitment to support investment-grade, asset-backed credit, including large-scale infrastructure projects.
From Harley-Davidson loans to Nvidia GPUs, these ten developments show how asset-based finance is scaling across industries and reshaping private credit. For allocators, the opportunity is not just in the market’s growth, but in the diversification, yield, and downside protection that asset-backed structures provide.
The challenge is keeping pace with a market evolving this quickly. Dakota Marketplace was built for that purpose, giving allocators a clear view of the managers, strategies, and transactions driving asset-based finance forward.
Book a demo of dakota marketplace to track these managers and more.
Morgan Holycross is a Marketing Manager at Dakota.
