The rise of retail
The private markets industry, currently valued at $25 trillion, is expected to more than double to $60 trillion by 2032. This growth will be driven by retail investors (largely high- and ultra-high-net-worth individuals), who are expected to contribute approximately $7.4 trillion in net-new capital over the next nine years. Traditionally, the private markets have been dominated by institutional investors, but the growing interest from retail investors is reshaping the landscape.
Here's what it means for GPs:
Access to new capital pools: Retail investors represent a vast, untapped source of capital. By creating investment vehicles tailored to retail, such as feeder funds or interval funds, GPs can diversify their investor base and raise more capital.
Increased demands of the investing experience: Retail investors expect an experience more akin to public markets than institutional investors. They’re used to creating a Schwab or Fidelity account once, buying and selling securities with a single click, and viewing performance data in real time. Reams of documents to sign, a new KYC process for every fund subscription, and significant lags in performance reporting won’t fly. GPs need to adapt by investing in technology and services that offer investors a more public-markets-like experience and help them manage the demands of 10x—or even 100x—the number of LPs.
Regulatory considerations: Engaging retail investors often involves navigating stricter regulatory requirements, such as compliance with securities laws and investor protection rules. GPs must ensure they meet these standards while maintaining operational efficiency.
Education and communication: Retail investors may lack the sophisticated knowledge of institutional players. GPs must invest in educational resources and communication strategies to help retail investors understand the complexities of private markets.
The rise of retail participation in the private markets allows GPs to expand their reach and diversify their capital sources. However, vying for this capital won't be possible without significant investment in their operations and infrastructure.
The next era of innovation
As our CEO, Alex Robinson, highlighted in a recent episode of our podcast, The Distribution by Juniper Square, AI is not just a tool—it’s the driving force behind the next era of private markets innovation.
By automating many fund operations activities, AI will streamline workflows for GP front and back offices, allowing them to work smarter, move faster, and focus on relationships and returns.
From the front office perspective, we imagine agentic AI drafting LP emails, compiling quarterly reports, extracting key terms from documents, or summarizing meeting notes. For the back office, it’s about reducing operational risk while remaining in control. AI agents that understand your firm’s business rules (and never sleep) can be used to monitor key fund administration workflows, flag issues, and route inbound requests to the right person. The promise is greater reporting accuracy, faster response times, and fewer costly errors.
Perhaps the most transformational use case of AI for the industry: Bringing structure to unstructured data. Most fund managers have vast pools of potential insights buried in PDFs, emails, memos, and third-party data providers. An AI tool that can unify this data and provide a ChatGPT-like interface for users will give GPs the superpower to ask questions of their data, get a context-rich answer, and take action—all from one place.
All of the above scratches the surface of what’s possible, and it’s what we’re building with JunieAI.
How technology supports trust
Trust is earned over years of shared success, clear communication, and follow-through. But as firms scale and investor expectations evolve, maintaining that personal touch becomes harder.
Technology can support GPs in building and maintaining trusted relationships by:
Making relationship management scalable: Instead of relying on scattered notes and inboxes, a centralized system of record can ensure that every team member has access to the full context of a relationship—past interactions, preferences, commitments, and concerns—so nothing slips through the cracks.
Freeing teams to focus on what matters: Automation can take on repetitive, manual work—things like drafting investor emails, generating performance summaries, or updating portals. That gives IR professionals more time to have meaningful conversations and build deeper partnerships.
Enabling responsiveness at every stage: Timely communication builds trust. Tools that surface the right signals (like when an investor opens a document or submits a subscription doc) can help teams follow up quickly, answer questions proactively, and demonstrate attentiveness without being intrusive.
Personalizing the experience at scale: Modern private markets investors expect the same ease and customization they get with their online banking and public market investment experience. Technology can help deliver personalized updates, curated insights, and a high-quality branded experience, even if it's partially automated.
Building transparency through data: When investors can log in and instantly access up-to-date reports, capital account summaries, and key documents, it builds confidence. It also reduces back-and-forth, so teams can spend less time chasing requests and more time adding value.
The time is now
Time is of the essence. The private markets are historically slow to adopt technology and innovation, but if you're not investing in AI today, you're already behind.
It’s not for hype reasons, either. Constraints on liquidity, driven by headwinds like high interest rates, inflation, trade wars, and geopolitical uncertainty, have created a vicious cycle for private markets GPs. As mentioned earlier, this cycle is delaying exits and limiting distributions, forcing fund managers to rethink how their firms operate and make profitability a core area of focus, not just IRR at the asset or deal level.
Investments in AI will be an investment in creating “operational alpha” for GPs themselves. Rather than just cost savings, operational alpha is about investing in the cultural and technical foundations—everything from the firm's strategy, product road mapping, compensation culture, and succession plan—to give fund managers the freedom to focus on what successful GPs do best: making great investment decisions.