A perpetual-life fund is an investment vehicle with no termination date and no planned liquidity event — it raises capital continuously, invests indefinitely, and provides investor liquidity solely through ongoing share repurchases at NAV. The structure is the architecture of the modern non-traded market: NAV REITs, perpetual BDCs, and their credit and infrastructure cousins.
What "perpetual" changes
The legacy non-traded model was a lifecycle: raise at a fixed price, invest, then deliver a liquidity event — listing, sale, or wind-down — within a stated horizon (a promise whose frequent non-delivery defines the category’s history). The perpetual model removes the destination: shares are sold continuously at monthly NAV-based transaction prices across multiple classes, the portfolio is managed for indefinite hold, and the redemption program (typically 2%/month, 5%/quarter caps) is the exit, permanently. The consequences run both directions. Investor-favorable: entry and exit at estimated value rather than arbitrary fixed prices, institutional managers running the vehicles, no forced sales at a fund clock’s arbitrary end. The structural cautions: nothing ever forces a realization event that would test NAV against the market, sponsor economics (fees on a perpetually growing base) reward asset retention, net-flow dynamics — not portfolio maturity — govern liquidity health, and the investor’s outcome depends indefinitely on valuation governance. The evergreen fund page covers the same architecture in its institutional/private form; “perpetual-life” is the term of art in registered non-traded products, where it appears in every modern prospectus’s first pages.
Related terms
Evergreen Fund · Non-Traded REIT · Continuous Offering · Redemption Program · Wind-Down
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