The struggles of the PE-backed CEO
Jenna O’Malley/PitchBook News
A year into his tenure, the chief executive of a PE-backed industrial company was shown the door.
He was brought in to turn the business around after his predecessor failed, an adviser recounted to PitchBook. The PE sponsor tasked him with driving organic growth and winning a target number of new sales accounts within 12 months. He missed those goals and showed little sign of closing the gap. The sponsor concluded that he “did not move with the urgency” required.
“It used to be that if a CEO was hired, there wouldn’t be a question of replacing them or thinking of replacing them within the first year to 18 months,” said Vamsi Tetali, founder and CEO at Synenté, a firm that assesses CEOs and CFOs for PE-backed portfolio companies.
Firing a chief executive that early is still uncommon, said advisers who assess CEOs and other C-suite executives at PE-backed companies. But many see sponsors’ patience with portfolio company chiefs wearing thin, and say that PE firms are quicker to resort to termination and replacement.
Others are seeing sponsors monitor their CEOs much more closely, step up performance reviews, and turn to more hands-on coaching to help those they see as struggling.
In short, PE-backed CEOs are under the microscope, making a job that has always been tough even tougher.
The macroeconomic forces that underpin this are familiar by now. When interest rates went sharply higher in 2022, exits became harder, hold periods stretched and distributions to LPs dried up. The old playbook, which relied on cheap debt and being able to sell into a rising market, stopped working.
Global PE funds acquired 17,649 companies between 2018 and 2021. About 58% of them are still held by the same acquirer as of Oct. 26, according to PitchBook data.
Today, PE firms—many of which paid little attention to company operations in the past—are racing to develop value-creation strategies. Broad revenue targets have given way to specific operational metrics, and the pressure is on the CEO to convert these plans into earnings.
From tokenized assets to payments and prediction markets, blockchain’s revenue sources are diversifying. Institutional adoption and use across the broader economy accounted for a third of the total in Q3 2026. Public companies now earn 16%, up from 7% in 2022.
The newly released 1kx Blockchain Revenue Report examines an industry projected to generate about $100 billion this year. Drawing on data from 2,600+ protocols and earnings reports from 100+ public companies, it explores what drives revenue, who earns it and how the market values those businesses.
Anthropic’s S-1 filing last week offered much-anticipated insight into the company’s revenue, compute costs and ownership details post-IPO. PitchBook analyst Harrison Rolfes noted that “public shareholders won’t control the company” after the IPO, which might seem contradictory to going public in the first place. If public shareholders aren’t controlling Anthropic post-IPO, who is?
A) Anthropic’s board has the power to reject any shareholder vote
B) The company’s seven co-founders will retain majority voting control after the IPO
C) Anthropic’s top investors from private funding rounds will hold veto rights after the IPO
D) Anthropic’s public benefit corporation structure changes what all shareholders can vote on
ICYMI
The maker of Claude filed to go public Monday, bringing a long-awaited exit for its VC backers, founders and strategic investors.
After decades spent consolidating dentists and eye doctors, PE took a shot at med spas and GLP-1 clinics. The first big exit test comes in 2027.
Strong distributions helped the Boston PE firm raise the largest buyout fund of the year, though fundraising was the toughest it’s ever been.
“The reality is, the amount of capital that’s being deployed in the space just isn’t anywhere close to matching the demand and the need, and that puts you in an amazing spot [as a lender]. It means that you get to pick the things that you do.”
— Victoria Chant, senior managing director and global head of capital markets and bank relations at Blackstone, speaking about private credit lenders’ participation in the data center buildout. Read more about how private credit is reaching into the AI infrastructure bonanza.
CEO and co-founder of Anthropic Dario Amodei speaks at the 2025 New York Times Dealbook Summit.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Answer: B
Anthropic’s seven co-founders—Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish and Christopher Olah—will have 50.1% of the company’s voting power and 10% of the stock post-IPO. See 5 charts that break down Anthropic’s S-1 filing.
This edition of The Weekend Pitch was written by Madeline Shi and Nadine Manske. It was edited by Rod James and Nadine Manske.
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