Private Credit: A $1.2 Trillion Disagreement

Methodology

The estimates on this page are NOT alternative measurements of one quantity, and averaging them would be meaningless. Private credit has no settled definition: whether an estimate includes asset-backed finance, BDCs, mezzanine debt and real-estate credit moves the total by more than a trillion dollars. Preqin and AIMA differ by ~$1.2tn on the same year for exactly this reason. OMITTED: PwC ("more than $2tn") and Moody’s (">$2tn by end-2026", "approaching $4tn by 2030") publish thresholds and directional statements rather than point estimates. Plotting a threshold as a bar would misrepresent it, so those are described here instead of charted. CAVEAT: the 2030 projections look more convergent than the current estimates, but each inherits its own starting scope — a projection built off the narrow $2.28tn base and one built off the broad $3.5tn base are answering different questions. Cross-reference: the ~$800bn private-credit and off-balance-sheet data-centre estimate on the ai-debt-financing index is a subset of this market. Re-verified 2026-08-10.