The world's largest pension funds

The world’s largest 500 asset managers is a joint annual research study conducted by the Thinking Ahead Institute, in conjunction with Pensions & Investments. This edition covers trends and assets under management (AUM) for 2025.

Key industry observations

	

20 years of asset managers ranking – for two decades, the Top 500 report has captured an extraordinary period of change in asset management
In 2025, the top 500 managers reached USD 169.7 trillion total discretionary AUM
A small group of private market hyperscalers grew 17.2% p.a. AUM since 2020 
Passives now account for 45.6% of total assets, a 3.7% annual increase in share of investments
The Top 20 managers’ share of total AUM was 46.3% in 2025.

Jessica Gao, Director at The Thinking Ahead Institute commented:

Scale is becoming a different kind of competitive advantage. Emerging asset-manager hyperscalers are using scale to create integrated platforms that can originate, structure, execute and distribute investments, and deploy capital into opportunities of increasing size and complexity.

Key findings

Short report covering key findings of this year’s study.

Full report

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