Private equity's share of business headlines suggests it owns half the economy. In the $1M to $300M+ range. PE's home turf, the segment every fund pitch deck is about, the actual number is startlingly small.
“Private equity has consolidated the market.”
Source: recurring theme in financial press coverage
Not yet, not even close. Of 4,840,019 companies in the $1M to $300M+ range, 56,666 (1.2%) are PE-backed. Family-owned businesses outnumber PE portfolio companies 6.8 to 1. The US market is slightly more penetrated (1.1%) than the EU (1.3%), but in both, the overwhelming majority of the market has never taken institutional capital.
Source: Veltria dataset, 4,840,019 companies, computed 2026-07-09.
Where PE actually hunts
The portfolio is not spread evenly. Manufacturing is PE's largest exposure (9,124 companies), ahead of technology (9,999) and healthcare (7,626). The buyout industry's reputation is software; its balance sheet is machine shops.
Source: Veltria dataset, 4,840,019 companies, computed 2026-07-09.
The 3-to-1 succession gap
383,450 family-owned companies against 56,666 PE-backed ones is the cleanest quantification we know of the "succession wave" thesis that drives search funds and lower-middle-market buyout strategies. Even if only a tenth of family owners sell this decade, the pipeline exceeds the entire current PE portfolio universe in this range.
Where the targets hide
VC-backed companies (51,142) cluster in technology and metros; family ownership concentrates in manufacturing, construction, food and distribution, exactly the sectors with the highest revenue per employee and the weakest digital footprints (see our digital footprint analysis). The practical playbook: filter family-owned + industrial + $10–50M and you have a proprietary sourcing list that most funds are still assembling by hand.
Ownership classification is included with every record, filter your slice by family-owned, PE-backed and more on request.
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