- Clipway has closed its debut fund, Clipway Secondary Fund I, at $6.4 billion, a world record for a first-time secondaries platform, after starting the raise with a $4 billion target.
- All three managing partners, Vincent Gombault, Ingmar Vallano, and Benoît Verbrugghe, previously held senior roles at Ardian, one of Europe’s largest private equity firms, with Gombault having co-founded the Fund of Funds business within what became Ardian.
- Clipway’s proprietary AI platform, TESS, processed more than $267 billion of secondary opportunities and rejected 97% of them, deploying just over $6 billion across 1,403 companies and 177 funds.
When three of the most senior executives at one of Europe’s largest private equity firms walk out and set up a competitor, the industry pays attention. When that competitor raises $6.4 billion in its debut fund, closing 60% above its original $4 billion target, the industry has its answer.
Clipway, the London-based private equity secondaries firm, has announced the final close of Clipway Secondary Fund I at $6.4 billion, making it the largest debut secondaries platform ever raised and establishing the firm as the world’s largest independent dedicated secondaries firm. The fund attracted commitments from 186 limited partners across 6 continents, including sovereign wealth funds, pension plans, insurance companies, endowments, and family offices. By capital committed, the LP base spans Europe at 44%, North America and Latin America at 21%, the Middle East at 18%, and Asia at 17%.
The Ardian backstory
Clipway was founded three years ago by Vincent Gombault, Ingmar Vallano, and Benoît Verbrugghe, three veterans of Ardian, the Paris-based private equity firm with over $170 billion in assets under management. Gombault did not merely work at Ardian — he co-founded it, serving as global head of funds of funds and private debt until his departure in December 2020. Vallano was senior managing director for fund-of-funds and co-investment until 2021. Verbrugghe led Ardian USA and sat on its executive committee. Together, they built and then left the firm to build again, from scratch, in London.
The founding team’s pedigree is the most obvious explanation for why Clipway could raise $6.4 billion in its first fund. But the LPs who backed them were not just betting on relationships. They were betting on a structural argument about how secondaries investing should work in an era of AI and large-scale data processing.
The AI that rejects almost everything
At the centre of Clipway’s strategy is TESS, its Tech-Enabled Secondaries System. Since launch, TESS has processed more than $267 billion of secondary market opportunities across 38,500 private companies and 3,400 private equity funds. Of that total, Clipway deployed just over $6 billion, a rejection rate of roughly 97%. The AI does not find deals. It eliminates them, leaving only the highest-conviction opportunities for the investment team to pursue.
Two-thirds of the capital deployed to date has been sourced on a proprietary, off-market basis, meaning Clipway is finding transactions that never reach the broader market. TESS analyses opportunities from the underlying company level up, using advanced analytics and machine learning to support pricing and portfolio construction, while final investment decisions remain with the human team. Clipway’s strategic partners, including Mubadala Investment Company, Carmignac, and General Atlantic, also have direct access to TESS to monitor and analyse their own private equity portfolios.
How the firm is structured
Clipway has grown to 62 professionals across 6 offices globally, with 18 of those working in data science and technology. That ratio – nearly one in three professionals in tech roles at a traditional PE firm – is unusual and reflects how central TESS is to the investment process rather than being a bolt-on capability.
The governance structure is also deliberate. No individual at Clipway owns more than 10% of the firm. Equity is distributed broadly across the senior team, a model designed to prevent the instability that occurs at PE firms when a dominant founder exits. It is the kind of structural decision that rarely appears in fund announcements but matters considerably to long-term institutional investors.
The market Clipway is aiming for
The secondaries market has expanded rapidly as private equity has grown but exit routes — IPOs and M&A have slowed, leaving more investors wanting liquidity from positions they cannot sell through traditional channels. According to PitchBook’s Q1 2026 Global Private Market Fundraising Report, secondaries fundraising success is increasingly concentrated among managers with scale, differentiated access, and established LP relationships. Clipway had none of those when it started raising three years ago. It has all three now.
CSF I focuses on LP-led secondary transactions in North American and Western European buyout funds, targeting mid-market companies in developed markets. The strategy is designed to acquire quality private equity exposure at discounts to market pricing, with the AI layer providing the analytical firepower to price complex portfolios faster and more precisely than traditional methods allow.
