How many times can you sell the same company (to yourself), and what does it mean for your investors?
In August 2025, Accel-KKR closed a $1.9 billion single-asset continuation fund for isolved, a human capital management software provider it has backed since 2011.
What makes the deal stand out is that it’s not just a continuation vehicle (CV), but a continuation vehicle squared: back in 2019, Accel-KKR had already rolled isolved into a $1.4 billion multi-asset continuation fund, fueling a tripling of revenue and profitability (Accel-KKR originally invested in isolved way back, in 2011).
And while CV² deals are still rare, first-generation continuation vehicles are rapidly becoming a dime a dozen in today’s private markets. Private equity is not the only domain, either: private credit is starting to see an uptick in similar structures.
In the commercial real estate world, the closest analog is a recapitalization, which serves a similar purpose of extending ownership and unlocking liquidity. Read more about them here:
Today, we’ll cover:
✅ What continuation vehicles (CVs) are
✅ Why they’re booming
✅ Their advantages, and - more importantly - what investors need to watch out for.
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🔎 What Are Continuation Vehicles?
Let’s zoom out for a second. Before a continuation vehicle even enters the picture, you’ve got the classic private equity playbook: a GP raises a fund, buys a handful of companies, and works to grow their value.
Here’s a deeper dive on what drives returns in PE:
Fund lives are typically around ten years, at which point the GP is supposed to sell and return capital to investors.
Exits usually fall into one of three buckets:
IPO (taking the company public)
Sale (to a competitor, strategic buyer, or another PE sponsor)
Continuation vehicle
That last one, continuation vehicles, or CVs, is where things get interesting. A CV is a fund the GP sets up specifically to keep owning a company (or a few of them) past the original fund’s expiration date.
(Continuation vehicles fall into a broader category of secondary funds. Learn more here:
The mechanics are straightforward, but the implications are not: