How Apollo's near-$10 billion Atlantic Aviation deal fits its infrastructure push
Apollo Global Management took a major stake in KKR-backed Atlantic Aviation at a near-$10 billion valuation, deepening its bet on airport ground infrastructure.
Apollo Global Management has taken a significant stake in Atlantic Aviation, the fixed-base operator network long controlled by KKR, in a transaction that values the company at nearly $10 billion. The deal, announced August 27, keeps KKR on as a substantial shareholder while pulling the Manhattan-headquartered asset manager deeper into the business of servicing private jets.
The transaction more than doubles Atlantic Aviation's value from the roughly $4.5 billion KKR paid for the company in 2021. It also extends a run of aviation-infrastructure buying by Apollo, whose funds bought a smaller FBO operator in 2023, and arrives as private capital managers increasingly favor infrastructure and other real assets over traditional buyouts.
What Atlantic Aviation Actually Runs
Atlantic Aviation operates more than 100 fixed-base operator, or FBO, locations across North America. FBOs are the ground-side businesses at airports that fuel, hangar, maintain and de-ice private and corporate aircraft, and that handle passenger and crew services such as lounges, ground transportation and customs clearance for international arrivals.
The business runs on long-term airport concession agreements, contracts that let Atlantic operate at a given airfield for years at a time. Apollo partner David Cohen described the result as an "irreplicable infrastructure footprint" across some of the country's busiest airports.
The company is also building out a division called Vertiports by Atlantic, intended to eventually serve electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs, as that technology matures.
The Teterboro Connection
For New York readers, Atlantic's most relevant facility sits at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, which the company describes as just a few miles from Manhattan. The location operates around the clock, offers heated hangar space large enough for aircraft up to a Gulfstream G650, and separately maintains community hangar capacity with a 28-foot door able to accommodate a Global 7500.
Atlantic's Teterboro operation also handles on-field customs processing and requires arriving aircraft to carry a reservation number under current airport protocols.
How The Ownership Is Actually Structured
Neither Apollo nor KKR disclosed the size of the stake changing hands. Their joint announcement describes Apollo-managed funds as acquiring "a significant interest" in Atlantic Aviation, while KKR-managed funds remain "a substantial shareholder." KKR said it is funding its continued position primarily through its infrastructure investment vehicles.
The final structure differs from what was reported in the spring. Bloomberg reported in March, citing people familiar with the matter, that Apollo was partnering with GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, to buy a majority stake in Atlantic, with KKR investing new money to retain a large interest. Apollo's official August 27 announcement, and subsequent coverage of it, named only Apollo and KKR as parties to the transaction; GIC does not appear in that announcement, and it is not clear from the public record whether GIC's involvement changed between March and August.
Apollo used Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison as legal counsel and Evercore and Morgan Stanley as financial advisers on the deal. KKR was advised by Kirkland & Ellis.
From $4.5 Billion To Near $10 Billion
KKR bought Atlantic Aviation from Macquarie Infrastructure Corporation in 2021 for about $4.5 billion. The new transaction values the company at close to $10 billion, more than double that price five years later.
Talks over the current deal were already underway by late March, when Bloomberg reported Apollo was nearing an agreement that could be announced within days. The announcement did not ultimately come until late August, roughly five months after that initial report.
“The new transaction values Atlantic Aviation at close to $10 billion, more than double the price KKR paid five years earlier.”
Apollo's Broader Push Into Aviation Infrastructure
This is not Apollo's first purchase of ground aviation infrastructure. In November 2023, Apollo's infrastructure funds acquired a majority stake in Modern Aviation, a smaller FBO platform founded in 2018 that operated 16 sites across North America under chief executive Mark Carmen. Apollo said its funds have deployed more than $12 billion into aviation investments across its platform.
Aviation is one piece of a larger infrastructure buildout at the firm. Apollo said it has originated more than $155 billion in infrastructure transactions and financings over the past five years, at a firm that managed roughly $1.05 trillion in assets as of June 30, 2026. KKR, for its part, said it has invested more than $12 billion in aviation since 2015 and manages more than $120 billion in infrastructure assets firmwide.
Why Private Equity Wants Infrastructure Right Now
The Atlantic Aviation deal lands amid a broader shift in where private capital is flowing. Total private capital fundraising fell for a fourth straight year, with $1.23 trillion raised in the twelve months ending March 31, 2026, down 15.5% from a year earlier. Private equity fundraising specifically fell 29.1% to $385.2 billion over that period, and private debt fell 18.2% to $219.4 billion.
Real assets, the category that includes infrastructure, was the exception. That segment grew 25.2% to $172.1 billion, the only strategy to expand, driven largely by energy-security projects and data-center construction. The industry was sitting on $4.36 trillion in dry powder awaiting deployment as of that measurement, with private capital assets under management overall projected to grow from $20.3 trillion to $26.7 trillion by 2030.
