Bret Pearlman Net Worth 2026: Affinity Partners, Elevation

No reputable outlet has published an estimate of Bret Pearlman's net worth. The $20 million figure and the "$1 million a year" income that appeared on this page before had no source, so we have removed them. What is documented is a long private equity career: Pearlman is a former Blackstone managing director who co-founded Elevation Partners, the technology and media fund known for Bono's involvement, and he is now a partner at Affinity Partners, the investment firm founded by Jared Kushner.

What is Bret Pearlman's net worth?

Private equity partners are paid through salaries, a share of fund profits (carried interest) and their own investments in the funds, and none of those amounts are public for Pearlman. No Forbes list, Bloomberg index or business publication has put a figure on his wealth. SEC filings show his role in Elevation Partners' funds but not his personal share of their returns.

So this page does not show a number. Any figure you see elsewhere, including the $20 million once shown here, is a guess.

Where the money comes from

• Blackstone. CNBC describes him as a former Blackstone managing director. Federal campaign finance records from 2008 list his employer as Blackstone Group and Elevation Partners.
• Elevation Partners. CNBC reported that he co-founded the firm with Roger McNamee. Elevation, founded in 2004 and named after the U2 song, managed about $1.9 billion. Its deals included a $325 million investment for 25% of Palm in 2007 and about 1% of Facebook for $90 million in 2010, according to Wikipedia. A 2010 SEC filing on Palm lists Pearlman, alongside Marc Bodnick and Paul Hewson (Bono), as a manager of Elevation's general partner entities.
• HRS Management and The Hill. When Nexstar bought the political news site The Hill for $130 million in 2021, MediaPost quoted Pearlman on behalf of HRS Management, described as The Hill's largest investor, which had backed it for five years.
• Crystal Palace. The Guardian reported in 2015 that he was one of seven U.S. businessmen joining Josh Harris and David Blitzer's takeover of the English football club.
• Affinity Partners. He is a partner at the firm Jared Kushner founded in 2021, which the New York Times reported in 2024 was a roughly $3 billion fund with almost all of its money from foreign investors.

Career timeline

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What does Bret Pearlman do at Affinity Partners?

Affinity invests in companies in the United States, Israel and the Middle East. CNBC reported in June 2024 that Pearlman sat on the board of the original holding company of Unybrands, an Amazon seller aggregator in which Affinity had taken effective control, and that he did not respond to requests for comment. Reporting on Affinity, including by the New York Times, has focused on possible conflicts of interest because of Kushner's government role and the firm's Gulf backers; none of that coverage accuses Pearlman personally of wrongdoing.

Affinity Partners in numbers

The New York Times reported in April 2024 that Affinity managed about $3 billion, that 99% of investor money came from abroad, including government wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and that it collected roughly $40 million a year in management fees before any share of profits. By then it had made 10 investments totaling $1.2 billion, including Israeli car leasing company Shlomo Group, Dubai property site Dubizzle and German fitness firm EGYM. How much of those fees or any profits reaches Pearlman has not been reported.

Elevation Partners in brief

Elevation was set up by former Silver Lake investors and tech executives, including McNamee, Marc Bodnick, former Apple finance chief Fred Anderson and John Riccitiello, with Bono joining shortly after it began, according to Wikipedia. It also backed Forbes, Yelp and Move, Inc., and funded the deal that let Electronic Arts buy the game studios BioWare and Pandemic. By 2015 its portfolio had been sold off. Through September 2014 its fund had returned 11.4% a year.

Personal life and education

The earlier version of this page gave his age, height and weight, described a wife and claimed a Wharton economics degree. We found no reliable source for any of those details, so they have been removed. He has also supported the Youth Renewal Fund, which funds Darca schools in Israel, according to a fund document.

See also: Blake Nubar Net Worth

How this page was checked

We used CNBC, an SEC Form 4 filing, Wikipedia's Elevation Partners entry, MediaPost, the Guardian and the New York Times. Pearlman does not give interviews about his finances, and his funds do not report individual partner payouts.