AMERICAN INVESTMENTS FUND I LLC

Small businesses are the lifeblood of local communities. They enrich our cities and towns with culinary delights, fresh ideas, and disruptive thinking. They also serve as ladders for socioeconomic mobility, allowing anyone with a good idea, hard work, and a bit of luck to achieve the American dream. In 2022, 85 percent of all private equity investments went to support small businesses with fewer than 500 employees. These investments play a critical role in ensuring small businesses are making a resilient comeback after the challenges faced from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Private equity-backed businesses are offering workers ownership in their companies, strong benefits, and the opportunity to build wealth for their families. Learn more here about how private equity benefits workers, drives innovation, and invests across America.

Small and medium-sized businesses depend on two main sources of outside funding: credit and equity. Private credit, like private equity, helps strengthen and scale businesses of all sizes. But instead of owning part of a company, as private equity funds do, private credit loans provide an alternative to traditional bank lending and can be tailored to the specific needs of the borrower. Private credit has experienced remarkable growth in the U.S., soaring from less than $400 billion in assets under management in 2012 to $1 trillion by 2021. Approximately $500 billion has been invested in more than 3,600 businesses across America.

Private equity plays a critical role in supporting quality, affordable, accessible health care in the United States. Private equity invested more than $206 billion in U.S. health care throughout 2021 to fund research into deadly diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, expand and renovate facilities, modernize medical records and health care data, and make other needed investments.

As part of a diversified investment portfolio, private equity is consistently the highest returning asset class for public pensions, delivering median annualized returns of 15 percent over a 10-year period. More than 34 million American public servants depend on private equity, while 89 percent of public pension funds invest in private equity.