Behdad Eghbali

Co-Founder and Managing Partner Clearlake Capital Group

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Behdad Eghbali is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Clearlake Capital Group, the Santa Monica-based private investment firm he started in 2006 with José E. Feliciano and has spent two decades building into one of the largest sector-focused alternative asset managers in the world. Clearlake concentrates on software, technology-enabled services, industrials, energy and consumer businesses, and runs them through a proprietary operational-improvement framework the firm calls O.P.S. – the discipline that distinguishes it from purely financial buyers. Its scale changed step-wise in 2026: the completion of its acquisition of Pathway Capital Management in June took the combined platform to approximately $185 billion in assets under management and turned Clearlake from a large sector buyout firm into a diversified alternative manager spanning private credit, secondaries and co-investments. Eghbali is also, unusually for a private equity principal, a public figure outside finance, because Clearlake co-led the 2022 acquisition of Chelsea Football Club and holds the controlling interest in it.

Career Highlights

• Co-founded Clearlake Capital Group in 2006 with José E. Feliciano and has been Managing Partner throughout.
• Grew the firm to approximately $185 billion in assets under management following the completion of the Pathway Capital Management acquisition on 9 June 2026, which added more than $95 billion in private markets assets.
• Co-led Clearlake’s May 2022 acquisition of Chelsea Football Club in a consortium deal valued at approximately £2.3 billion, with Clearlake as majority shareholder of the holding company BlueCo.
• Built the firm’s investment approach around the O.P.S. operational-improvement framework, applied across more than 400 completed investments.
• Described by the Financial Times as running one of the fastest-growing buyout firms in the world.
• Named to the Forbes billionaires list, with an estimated net worth of approximately $3.9 billion as of May 2026, having first appeared on the Forbes 400 in 2021.
• Regularly named to the Los Angeles Business Journal’s LA500, including the 2026 edition.
• Began his career in Morgan Stanley’s Mergers & Acquisitions and technology groups, then invested at TPG Capital.
• Sits on the boards of numerous Clearlake portfolio companies.

Professional Journey

Eghbali was born in Rasht, Iran, in May 1976, and immigrated to the United States as a child. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley, taking a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business with an emphasis in finance.

He started in investment banking at Morgan Stanley, working in the Mergers & Acquisitions and technology groups – a pairing that put him on technology transactions at the point where the sector was becoming the dominant source of buyout activity. He then moved to the principal side at TPG Capital, focusing on leveraged buyouts, restructurings and transformational transactions across business services, communications and media, and technology. Restructuring work in particular shaped what came next: it is the discipline of buying assets that need operational repair rather than assets that merely need leverage.

In 2006 he and José E. Feliciano founded Clearlake Capital Group. The firm’s thesis was sector concentration plus operational intervention: focus narrowly enough on software, technology-enabled services, industrials, energy and consumer to know the businesses properly, then apply a standardised improvement playbook – Clearlake’s O.P.S. framework – rather than relying on multiple expansion. Over roughly twenty years the firm completed more than 400 investments and grew fast enough that the Financial Times characterised it as one of the fastest-growing buyout firms globally. Eghbali serves on the boards of numerous portfolio companies, historically including DigiCert, Diligent, Cornerstone OnDemand, Ivanti, Perforce Software and EagleView. Zywave, the insurance software company sometimes associated with him in contact records, is one of these portfolio holdings – acquired by Clearlake in 2020 alongside Advisen – and not an employer.

In May 2022, Clearlake co-led the acquisition of Chelsea Football Club in a consortium transaction valued at approximately £2.3 billion. The deal was publicly fronted by Todd Boehly, but Clearlake holds the majority shareholding in BlueCo, the club’s holding company, with Eghbali and Feliciano representing the firm’s controlling interest. The purchase made Eghbali a recognisable figure well beyond private equity and brought a level of public scrutiny that the asset class does not usually attract.

The most consequential recent development is structural rather than reputational. On 12 November 2025 Clearlake agreed to acquire Pathway Capital Management, a global provider of private markets solutions to institutional and wealth clients managing more than $95 billion. The transaction closed on 9 June 2026 and took Clearlake’s combined platform to approximately $185 billion in assets under management, extending its capabilities into private credit, secondaries, co-investments and bespoke private markets strategies. Terms were not disclosed. The effect is to reposition a sector-focused buyout firm as a diversified alternative asset manager.

Eghbali lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Julia Harris. Forbes estimated his net worth at approximately $3.9 billion as of May 2026. He sits on several nonprofit boards, including his family’s Noor Foundation.

Education

University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with an emphasis in Finance