Largest hedge fund managers in the US

The largest hedge fund manager in the US by this measure is Citadel Advisors LLC, followed by Millennium Management and LMR Partners, in the SEC's Form ADV file of 2026-10-02. We rank advisers whose hedge funds are at least half of the private funds they report, by the gross assets of the private funds the adviser reports, not fund size or assets raised. For hedge funds this measure can run far above the money investors put in, because gross assets include positions bought with borrowed money. The median adviser that reports hedge funds reports $328.1 million.

Why borrowing moves managers up the table

Form ADV asks for each fund's gross asset value, and its instructions say not to deduct any outstanding debt. A fund that borrows to hold larger positions reports the full value of those positions. Gross assets are therefore not net asset value, the investors' own capital in the fund.

Two managers with the same investor capital can sit far apart in this table. The one whose funds borrow more, or run larger long and short books, reports more gross assets, so the order tracks how much each manager's funds hold rather than how much investors gave it. A fund of hedge funds also reports its stakes in other managers' funds, which those managers report again.

Fund count tells you little about size. Seven of the 100 rows report a single private fund, among them Garda Capital Partners near the top ten and Adage Capital Management in the top 40. Others report hundreds.

Credit and other managers in the table

Form ADV's hedge fund definition is broad. It covers any private fund (other than a securitized asset fund) whose adviser may earn a performance fee calculated on unrealized gains, that may borrow more than half its net asset value, or that may sell short. Commodity pools count as hedge funds for the question.

So the table holds more than the managers a trader would call hedge funds. Bain Capital Credit and KKR Credit Advisors pass the focus rule with credit in their names. Blackstone Infrastructure Advisors reports all of its private funds as hedge funds, and CBRE Investment Management is in the top 80. Pacific Investment Management Company, Oaktree, TPG Angelo Gordon, Fortress and Cerberus each report more than 100 hedge funds. We read each firm's business from its name only, not from its filings or its own description.

Where the largest managers are

New York City is the main office of almost half of the 100 rows. Boston is next, followed by Greenwich, then Chicago and San Francisco. Connecticut as a whole, with Greenwich, Stamford, Westport and Rowayton, has more rows than any state but New York. Florida's rows include the top-ranked Citadel Advisors in Miami. Two managers in Wayzata, Minnesota, are in the table.

What this ranking doesn't show

• Net asset value or investor capital. Gross assets include borrowed money and can be several times a fund's net assets.
• Fund size. No single fund is shown, and gross assets are summed across all of an adviser's private funds.
• Returns. Performance is not on Form ADV.
• A market total. We publish no sum of this table, because master funds, feeders and funds of funds report the same assets.
• Group totals. A manager that files under several advisers is not added up into one row.
• Managers based abroad, state-registered advisers and residence-flagged filers. None of them is ranked.

Sources

1. SEC, Information About Registered Investment Advisers and Exempt Reporting Advisers, Form ADV data files ia100226.zip and ia100226-exempt.zip (file of 2026-10-02), https://www.sec.gov/data-research/sec-markets-data/information-about-registered-investment-advisers-exempt-reporting-advisers (accessed 2026-10-04)
2. SEC, Investment Adviser Public Disclosure, firm summary pages (one per ranked adviser, linked by CRD number in the table), https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/ (accessed 2026-10-04)
3. SEC, Form ADV Part 1A, Schedule D Section 7.B.(1), questions 8 (fund of funds), 10 (type of private fund) and 11 (gross asset value), https://www.sec.gov/about/forms/formadv-part1a.pdf (accessed 2026-10-04)
4. SEC, Form ADV General Instructions and Instructions for Part 1A, Instruction 5.b (regulatory assets, indebtedness) and Instruction 6 (hedge fund definition), https://www.sec.gov/about/forms/formadv-instructions.pdf (accessed 2026-10-04)