Alpine targets $1B fund to invest in its own businesses - PitchBook

Alpine Investors, a buyout firm known for rolling up companies in the software and business services sectors, is aiming to raise at least $1 billion to invest in companies it already owns.

The San Francisco-based firm, which has $18.9 billion in assets under management, will use the Heroes Fund to back companies held by its older funds that have grown rapidly but need more capital to continue expanding, according to people familiar with the matter.

The fund will invest both on a standalone basis and alongside other private equity firms that want to acquire a minority stake.

Alpine has a history of acquiring businesses in highly fragmented markets and building them through add-ons into regional or national companies.

Apex Services Providers, an HVAC provider that launched with an investment from Alpine in 2019, made 60 add-on acquisitions in 2025 alone, according to the firm. In its pitch to investors, Alpine has highlighted Apex as a strong candidate for investment from the Heroes Fund. Apex had returned nearly 14x investors’ capital, excluding fees, by the time the company was transferred into a $3.4 billion continuation vehicle in 2023.

Alpine also cited Orion Services Group as a possible investment target. The New York-based business used mergers and acquisitions to expand beyond HVAC services into areas such as commercial landscaping and facilities management in the six years since its formation. Orion was being held at a gross multiple of 4.6x as of the end of 2025, according to valuation data seen by PitchBook.

Private equity firms investing in businesses they already own can create potential conflicts of interest. The funds doing the buying and the selling are managed by the same firm, with the selling fund incentivized to maximize the price for exiting investors and the buying fund incentivized to minimize it.

Alpine did not comment on measures the Heroes Fund would take to mitigate conflicts, such as engaging a third-party valuation firm to provide a fairness opinion in deals where there is no minority investor to set a market-tested price. The firm also did not comment on whether the carried interest generated from selling a stake to the Heroes Fund would be reinvested, as is typically the case in continuation-fund deals.

Alpine is charging a 1% management fee to investors in the Heroes Fund, with the manager taking a 20% share of all profits above an 8% hurdle, according to sources.

Alpine itself is contributing 3% of the Heroes Fund’s equity. Existing Alpine investors will be able to co-invest on a fee-free basis.

The fund, which allows Alpine to hold onto its trophy assets for longer, is being raised amid the largest exit backlog the private equity market has seen. Alpine has not been immune to this slowdown, having exited just one business in 2025 and one in 2024, according to PitchBook data.

However, the firm has gotten off to an active 2026 on the exit front. In March, Philadelphia-based buyout firm Inverness Graham announced plans to acquire Alpine’s Axcel Learning, an online education and test preparation company. Last month, General Atlantic agreed to buy Team Services Holding for $3 billion, including debt, according to Bloomberg.