The first half of 2023 has played out in similar fashion to the back half of 2022 for US PE on many fronts. The industry continues to battle through a stubbornly high interest-rate environment that makes the cost of borrowing and servicing floating-rate debt prohibitively expensive for deals that would otherwise get done. Deployment remains down by 49.2% from the quarterly peak reached in Q4 2021, and realizations are down by 67.6% from the Q2 2021 peak. Fund performance, while still handily ahead of most asset classes and strategies on a 10-year basis, has fallen to the middle of the pack on a one-year horizon basis. As a result, fundraising continues to be more difficult and is tracking 15%-25% below 2022’s first half, although other strategies such as venture and real assets have fallen more precipitously.