HedgeCo.Net — KKR has agreed to sell Infinity Transportation, a full-service railcar and intermodal equipment lessor, to funds managed by Ares Infrastructure Equity and Ares Insurance Solutions in a deal that values the business at an enterprise value of approximately $2.9 billion, the two firms said on Monday. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027.
Atlanta-based Infinity, founded in 2004, owns and manages roughly 50,000 railcars leased to more than 350 lessees across the United States, Canada and Mexico. KKR’s wholly owned insurance subsidiary, Global Atlantic, has been invested in the company since 2016. Since 2021, KKR said, Infinity has built a standalone operating platform and expanded its fleet, increasing book value by 150% and becoming one of the largest railcar lessors in the U.S.
The seller framed the exit as an asset-based finance outcome rather than a classic buyout. “Infinity is a great example of KKR’s ability to scale ABF platforms into industry leaders and accelerate their long-term growth,” said Daniel Pietrzak, KKR partner and head of ABF. On the buy side, Mike Roth of Ares Infrastructure Equity and Anup Agarwal, head and chief investment officer of Ares Insurance Solutions, said transportation and logistics assets continue to benefit from the reshoring of manufacturing, increased investment in domestic industrial capacity and the need for more resilient supply chains, and called Infinity’s long-lived assets well suited for long-term investment.
For allocators, the pairing of an infrastructure equity fund with an insurance-solutions pool is the notable detail. Railcar leases produce contracted, asset-backed cash flows that sit between private credit and real assets, and both KKR, through Global Atlantic, and Ares are using insurance balance sheets to own them. The deal shows how the largest alternative managers are increasingly trading hard-asset leasing platforms among themselves, with the asset moving from an ABF strategy at one firm to an infrastructure and insurance strategy at another.
Macquarie Capital is financial adviser and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett is legal counsel to KKR; Citi is financial adviser and Kirkland & Ellis is legal counsel to Ares, which reported more than $671 billion of assets under management as of June 30, 2026. Ares said it plans to support Infinity’s fleet growth and pursue new acquisition opportunities after closing, leaving regulatory review and the pace of add-on fleet purchases as the next items for investors to watch.