How is Private Credit: A $1.2 Trillion Disagreement constructed?
Published by Deepstory Research as the methodology attached to Private Credit: A $1.2 Trillion Disagreement. Scope and source attribution are bounded by that Evidence Brief.
Procedure and scope
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.
Known failure modes and limits
- A single correct market size — no consensus definition exists.
- Returns, default rates, or loss experience.
- Geographic or strategy breakdowns.