StepStone Group and PitchBook Announce Partnership to Deliver Deal-Level Performance & Operating Metrics to Private Market Participants

Rhea-AI Summary

StepStone Group (Nasdaq: STEP) and PitchBook announced a partnership to deliver StepStone’s deal-level benchmarks and operating metrics through the PitchBook platform.

The offering combines StepStone’s SPI deal-level data with PitchBook’s private capital data and AI tools, provides aggregated and anonymized outputs, and is expected to be available in Q2 2026.

Positive

• Deal-level benchmarks from StepStone made available inside PitchBook
• Aggregated and anonymized outputs to protect fund and deal confidentiality
• Integration into PitchBook workflow for fund managers and investors
• Offered as standalone and via SPI, expanding distribution to managers and investors
• Supports rigorous deal underwriting with performance, valuation, and capital-structure data

Negative

• None.

News Market Reaction – STEP

-2.54%

1 alert

-2.54% Session close to close

$6.39B Market Cap

4.35K Volume

In the May 6 session, STEP declined 2.54%, reflecting a moderate negative market reaction.

Data tracked by StockTitan Argus on the day of publication.

Market Context

This announcement introduces a data-focused partnership that integrates StepStone’s SPI deal-level b...

Analysis

This announcement introduces a data-focused partnership that integrates StepStone’s SPI deal-level benchmarks into the PitchBook platform, aiming to provide more granular analytics and transparency across private equity, venture, growth, and infrastructure deals. It follows prior partnerships with Utmost and Aviva that expanded access to private markets, with historical same-tag moves averaging -1.81%. Investors may track adoption of the new benchmarking offering, future partnership activity, and how these initiatives relate to STEP’s position below its 200-day MA and 29.26% under its 52-week high.

Previous Partnership Reports

2 past events · Latest: Feb 12 (Positive)

Same Type Pattern 2 events

Date	Event	Sentiment	24h Move	Catalyst
Feb 12	Distribution partnership	Positive	-4.6%	Utmost partnership to give UK clients access to evergreen private markets strategies.
Oct 01	Pension partnership	Positive	+1.0%	Aviva partnership allocating 20–25% to private markets via StepStone’s global platform.

24h Move is the share-price change in the day after each event; other market factors may also have contributed.

Pattern Detected

Partnership announcements have shown mixed reactions, with one negative and one modestly positive move.

Recent Company History

Over the past year, StepStone has used partnerships to extend its private markets reach. A Feb 12, 2026 deal with Utmost expanded UK access to evergreen private equity, venture, credit, and infrastructure strategies, while a Oct 1, 2025 partnership with Aviva targeted UK pension savers via allocations of 20–25% to private markets, leveraging a $723 billion platform. These collaborations, averaging a -1.81% one-day move, frame today’s PitchBook agreement as a continued focus on distribution and data-driven access.

Key Terms

private markets, alpha, beta, capital structure, +1 more

5 terms

private markets financial

"Private markets investors are demanding greater transparency and more sophisticated analytics"

Private markets are places where investors buy and sell ownership in companies, debt, or assets that are not listed on public stock exchanges — think direct stakes in a start-up, private company, real estate project, or loan. They matter to investors because these deals can offer higher potential returns and diversification but come with less transparency, limited ability to sell quickly, and more uncertainty, like owning a whole house versus trading shares of a real estate fund.

alpha financial

"distinguish alpha from beta sources of returns for their fund managers"

Alpha is the extra return an investment or fund earns above what would be expected from overall market moves or a chosen comparison index; think of it as how much a chef’s unique recipe outperforms a standard cookbook dish. Investors use alpha to judge whether a manager’s decisions or a strategy are adding value beyond luck or general market trends, with positive alpha indicating outperformance and negative alpha showing underperformance.

View in glossary

beta financial

"distinguish alpha from beta sources of returns for their fund managers"

Beta measures how much a stock’s price tends to move compared with the overall market; think of the market as a tide and beta as how high a particular boat rides with each wave. A beta above 1 means the stock usually swings more than the market, below 1 means it swings less, and a negative beta moves opposite. Investors use beta to gauge how adding a stock will change portfolio ups-and-downs and to estimate sensitivity to broad market moves.

View in glossary

capital structure financial

"Access to detailed performance, valuation, and capital structure data supports more rigorous deal underwriting"

Capital structure is the way a company finances its operations and growth by using different sources of money, such as borrowed funds (loans or bonds) and owner’s equity (investments from owners or shareholders). It’s like a recipe for baking a cake, where the balance of ingredients affects the final product's strength and taste; similarly, the mix of debt and equity influences a company's stability and risk. For investors, understanding a company's capital structure helps gauge how risky it might be to invest or lend money.

View in glossary

machine learning technical

"research, and advanced AI and machine learning tools—delivering insights"

Machine learning is a set of computer programs that learn patterns from large amounts of data and improve their predictions or decisions over time, like a recipe that gets better each time it’s adjusted based on taste tests. For investors it matters because these systems can speed up analysis, spot trends or risks humans might miss, automate routine work, and potentially create competitive advantages or cost savings that affect a company’s performance.

View in glossary

AI-generated analysis. How Rhea-AI works. Not financial advice.

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• Brings institutional-grade deal-level benchmarking into private market workflows
• Delivers greater transparency into private markets performance and operating metrics

NEW YORK, May 06, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- StepStone Group (Nasdaq: STEP), a leading private market investment firm, and PitchBook, a leading private capital markets intelligence provider and Morningstar (Nasdaq: MORN) company, today announced a partnership to provide access to StepStone’s deal-level benchmarks through the PitchBook platform.

The partnership combines deal-level performance and operating metrics from StepStone’s proprietary SPI platform with PitchBook’s industry-leading private capital market data, research, and advanced AI and machine learning tools—delivering insights through aggregated and anonymized outputs. Together, the two organizations aim to provide fund managers, investors, and service providers with greater transparency, deeper insights, and benchmarking capabilities across private equity buyout, venture capital, growth equity, and infrastructure deals.

"Private markets investors are demanding greater transparency and more sophisticated analytics to navigate an increasingly complex landscape," said Tyler Johnson, Partner and Chief Technology Officer at StepStone Group. "By partnering with PitchBook, we are delivering a solution that empowers investors to compare deal performance and operating metrics more granularly, analyze track records, and unlock new insights to enhance their decision-making processes.”

Key Benefits of the Partnership:

• Enhanced Deal-Level Analytics: Users gain access to a flexible analytics interface to report performance, exposure, deployment, operating metrics, and value creation analysis for private market deals. The tool leverages the combined deal and company classification databases of StepStone and PitchBook, enabling filtering and reporting capabilities across strategy, industry, geography, size, time period, and more. All outputs generated by the tool are aggregated and anonymized to respect fund manager and deal confidentiality.
• Improved Investor Relations & Investment Strategy: Fund managers can leverage more granular benchmarks to better articulate and quantify strengths and differentiators, improving transparency for fundraising and reporting and informing go-forward investment strategy.
• Clearer Insight into Performance Drivers: Analyzing performance at the deal-level (vs fund-level) allows for more granular, apples-to-apples comparisons, enabling investors to better understand the underlying drivers of performance and distinguish alpha from beta sources of returns for their fund managers and overall portfolio.
• Rigorous Deal Underwriting & Analysis: Access to detailed performance, valuation, and capital structure data supports more rigorous deal underwriting, enabling better informed investment decisions.

As the pulse of the private capital markets, PitchBook has continuously expanded its data coverage, analytical depth, and workflow capabilities across asset classes, regions, and fund strategies. By leveraging data from SPI by StepStone, investors can easily isolate underlying deal performance, evaluate value creation drivers, and analyze market trends across strategies, geographies, and vintages directly within their existing PitchBook workflow.

“As private markets mature, fund managers need benchmarking that goes deeper than high-level fund comparisons and is accessible within their existing workflows,” said Joanna McGinley, EVP of Strategic Partnerships and Initiatives. “Our partnership with StepStone brings institutional-grade, deal- and operating-level benchmarking into their PitchBook workflow, giving fund managers a more integrated way to evaluate performance, support fundraising, and navigate an increasingly complex private capital markets environment.”

The offering is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2026 and will be offered to fund managers and service providers through the PitchBook platform as a standalone solution and to investors through SPI by StepStone. To learn more about the partnership, click here.

About StepStone Group

StepStone Group Inc. (Nasdaq: STEP) is a global private markets investment firm focused on providing customized investment solutions and advisory and data services to its clients. As of December 31, 2025, StepStone was responsible for approximately $811 billion of total capital, including $220 billion of assets under management. StepStone’s clients include some of the world’s largest public and private defined benefit and defined contribution pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and insurance companies, as well as prominent endowments, foundations, family offices and private wealth clients, which include high-net-worth and mass affluent individuals. StepStone partners with its clients to develop and build private markets portfolios designed to meet their specific objectives across the private equity, infrastructure, private debt and real estate asset classes.

For more information, visit StepStone Group.

StepStone Group Contacts

Shareholder Relations:

Seth Weiss

shareholders@stepstonegroup.com

+1 (212) 351-6106

Media

Maggie Duffy / Harper Clark

Edelman

StepStone@edifi-dje.com

About PitchBook, a Morningstar company

As the pulse of private capital markets, PitchBook delivers trusted, real-time data, research, and technology to help investors, dealmakers, and innovators make decisions with confidence. Its products provide comprehensive information on companies, investors, funds, deals, and people, along with tools that help professionals analyze market activity and make informed decisions. Founded in 2007, PitchBook today serves more than 100,000 clients worldwide and is recognized as the leading source of private capital market intelligence. PitchBook has grown to over 3,000 employees across offices in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, London, Singapore, Mumbai, and other global locations. Since 2016, PitchBook is a subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. For more information, visit www.pitchbook.com.

FAQ

What will StepStone (STEP) deliver through the PitchBook partnership and when?

The partnership will deliver StepStone’s deal-level benchmarks and operating metrics via PitchBook. According to StepStone, the offering combines SPI deal data with PitchBook analytics and is expected to be available in Q2 2026.

How will PitchBook users access StepStone deal-level data for private equity and venture?

Users will access the data inside the PitchBook workflow via a flexible analytics interface. According to PitchBook, outputs are aggregated and anonymized and support filtering by strategy, industry, geography, size, and vintage.

What confidentiality safeguards are included with StepStone data on PitchBook?

All outputs generated by the tool are aggregated and anonymized to protect deal and fund confidentiality. According to StepStone, this preserves manager anonymity while enabling benchmarking and performance analysis.

Will the StepStone–PitchBook solution support underwriting and performance analysis for STEP investors?

Yes. The offering provides deal-level performance, valuation, and capital-structure data to support more rigorous deal underwriting. According to StepStone, this enables granular analysis of performance drivers within investor workflows.

Who will the StepStone data be offered to and in what formats on PitchBook?

The data will be offered to fund managers and service providers through PitchBook as a standalone solution and to investors through SPI by StepStone. According to the announcement, both delivery routes will be available.