Hey! Thanks for being here for Edition #9. You're one of 215+ subscribers, and I genuinely appreciate every single one of you.
I've spent two years building a network of investors - lenders, family offices, sponsors, people who move real capital into real estate. But I realised recently I've never once sat down with an actual VC.
Every week someone asks me about secondaries, venture rounds, pre-IPO deals - and I don't have a great answer, because that's not my lane. So I'm widening it. I'm looking to speak with five VCs who sit on the buy side of secondaries, allocate for a family office, have taken a fund through a real exit, and have a clear investment thesis.
If you know someone like that, send them my way.
Let's get into it.
KKR just closed Global Infrastructure Investors V at $19.2B - its largest infrastructure fund ever, and the biggest single addition to an infrastructure book that now stands at $120B. Over $9B is already committed. The capital is going toward three lanes: digital infrastructure, energy and power transition, and storage and logistics - and KKR's Raj Agrawal says demand is outpacing supply so badly that anything the firm can deliver over the next two to four years is "being snapped up... at premiums."
Even so, KKR says it's passing on assets priced at 30x earnings, short 5-7 year contracts, and single-hyperscaler facilities where the market isn't yet pricing in quality. It's part of a bigger pattern - private infrastructure fundraising hit a record $200-250B globally in 2025, as public budgets fall short of the multi-trillion-dollar need in power and data centres through 2040. KKR also isn't going it alone: in June it launched Helix Digital Infrastructure with NVIDIA, Vistra, and Kuwait's sovereign fund - over $10B aimed squarely at the power bottleneck behind AI data centres.
Also this week:
G Squared closed its largest-ever flagship fund at $2.3B, roughly double its predecessor, aimed at pre-IPO secondaries and growth-stage tech. The firm buys shares from existing holders who want liquidity before an IPO or acquisition - it previously picked up ~4.5M Anthropic shares for $135M from the FTX bankruptcy estate, and has disclosed positions in Polymarket, Mercor, and Nscale. Founder Larry Aschebrook has called current AI valuations potentially overheated and is holding dry powder for a possible 2027 correction, which tells you as much as the fund size does.
Vietnam posted 8% GDP growth in 2025, its fastest since 2007, and has now overtaken Malaysia and the Philippines as Southeast Asia's fastest-growing economy. I spent two weeks in Ho Chi Minh City recently, and the capital plans back up the growth story - Hanoi has committed $2.5T to rebuild its urban core and is targeting 10 metro lines by 2035, while HCMC is targeting an $800B economy by 2050 across six new strategic economic zones. Data centres are already the hottest asset class in the region, with capital flooding in from Singapore, China, and Japan.
Firehawk Aerospace, a defence-tech company 3D-printing solid-rocket motors and propellants, is closing in on a $1.2B valuation - up from $290M just twelve months ago. No new round has been announced, though there's talk of a Series D. CEO Will Edwards frames propellant as the choke point: "If you perfect the propellant, you can build the motors, and if you can build the motors, you can build the missile systems."
Nothing distinct enough to report on this front this week - my desk was dominated by deal underwriting and market news rather than a specific lender or investor conversation worth a bullet. If you're active in real assets, secondaries, or private credit and want to compare notes, just reply to this email.
Two deals I underwrote this week:
UK data centre, £65.5M. I underwrote a modular AI data centre being built on an already-owned, unencumbered brownfield site in the north of England, where demolition is already underway. The land alone is valued at £150M with government backing, sitting inside a major UK regeneration corridor with existing power infrastructure on site - the council has even waived a full environmental review. We're firmly in the risky early innings here: planning consent isn't decided until September 2026, first operations aren't targeted until November, and there are only LOIs in place rather than a signed offtake.
The site is 28MW, upgradable to 80MW, and a RICS valuation backs the residual land value as the main downside cushion - though cash reserves are tight, so execution matters. Investors get interest plus a 15% profit share over a 5-year term, with principal returned at maturity; the sponsor plans to hold and operate long-term rather than flip. More equity coming in now would likely unlock a first lien on the land, which would make this a much cleaner deal for a lender. My verdict: medium fit for private credit, strong fit for family offices, weak fit for institutions.
Hong Kong land banking, $40M. A group of family offices has already put in $20M on a 400,000 sq ft site in Hong Kong's Northern Metropolis, currently zoned agricultural, where the sponsor wants to build public housing. This is a bet on government rezoning, run by a team with over 50 years of combined experience inside Hong Kong's rezoning process - if a plot ratio uplift takes the site from 1x to 8x, land value moves fast. We're pre-rezoning, the riskiest point in a deal like this: no approvals yet, capital needs to be raised just to start the process, multiple landowners are still being negotiated with, and a "No Objections" letter is expected in 6-9 months.
What makes the location work is that the government is actively approving rezoning in this specific corridor - it's a designated New Development Area next to the Shenzhen border, where housing demand runs 14-18x supply. On the downside, the land was bought well below market price, and if public housing doesn't get approved there are three optional pivots, with a worst case of selling the land back to the Hong Kong government and a best case of a mainland developer buying in at a 5x premium. Investors can exit at rezoning approval or roll into Stage 2 of development - the exit value jumps immediately once rezoning clears. The team is confident it lands once funding closes, with contingencies either way. My verdict: medium fit for private lenders, strong fit for family offices, weak fit for institutions.
A post about someone claiming $85K/month online got under my skin this week - not because I doubted the number, but because I've lived the other side of it. I left tech sales a few years back to build a marketing agency from nothing, no plan, no clients, just belief. I got it past $30K/mo, full client roster, everything that looks good on paper. Except most of that $30K was never actually mine - it went straight back out on ads, staff, software, and "upgrades." The cash was leaving faster than it came in.
I used to see numbers like $85K/mo and assume the person was ahead of me. I don't anymore. A big top-line number isn't usually a lie - it's just rarely the whole story. Take-home might be $10-15K/mo if you're lucky, against a team you're fully responsible for and ad accounts eating 40% of revenue. If you're a sponsor pitching investors or lenders on your business, the same lesson applies: revenue is not the number that protects anyone's downside. Whoever's underwriting you will ask about margin, not top line - make sure you can answer that before they do.
A snapshot of what's currently moving through Capital Arbitrage:
Given everything above on the secondary market, it felt right to use this space a little differently this week.
The secondaries market isn't just a story I cover - it's becoming part of what actually moves through Capital Arbitrage. As more of the largest private companies stay private for longer, early shareholders, employees and pre-IPO investors are increasingly looking for liquidity before a public listing, and that's opening up access to positions that used to be nearly impossible to get into.
I recently partnered with a family office network that has access to secondaries in some of the names people ask me about most. If you're a family office, UHNWI or institution with interest in this space, reply to this email - let's connect.
Also live: the Top 35 Data Centre Lenders & Finance Specialists report. Built from 12 months of lender conversations, it's a 65-page breakdown of 35 specialist finance profiles across equipment finance, private credit, bridge lending and GCC capital - who they are, their mandate history, and what they actually look for on the buybox.
You can get that at capitalarbitrage.co/dclenders.
That's all for this week. See you next Friday.
— Jordon
P.S. I get 500,000+ monthly impressions on LinkedIn and a growing list of private capital readers right here. If you'd like to get your company, fund, or raise in front of this audience, just reply to this email.