Summit Partners Pursuing Exit from $20B RWA Wealth

Summit Partners, an investment firm active in financial services and technology, is pursuing a sale of its stake in the $19.7 billion registered investment advisor RWA Wealth Partners, according to sources familiar with the conversations.

Summit has hired bankers from Raymond James to explore an exit, according to the sources. Those conversations have been held with other private equity firms as well as strategic acquirers, according to one of the sources.

Summit took a controlling stake in Newtown, Mass.-based Adviser Investments in late 2020, according to PitchBook data. Adviser Investments acquired similarly sized Ropes Wealth Advisors in 2023 and later rebranded the combined entity as RWA Wealth Partners. 

Neither RWA Wealth nor Summit Partners responded to a request for comment.

Summit has multiple funds that took stakes in RWA Wealth in December 2020, according to regulatory filings. Founder Dan Wiener and other partners and board members also hold stakes, with some coming on after the acquisition and rebrand. 

Boston-based Summit describes itself as a growth partner for firms spanning early-stage venture capital and private equity, with investments across consumer services, technology, healthcare and life sciences. It had been an early investor in Focus Financial Partners and currently holds stakes in wealthtech platform VestMark.

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2025 has been an active year for private equity firms exiting majority and minority stakes that were often made in 2019 or the early 2020s. In September, Onex Partners, a Canadian private equity firm, sold its stake in RIA OneDigital to StonePoint Capital and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board. In October, Aquiline Partners agreed to exit its controlling position in the $250 billion SageView Advisory Group through a sale to Creative Planning. 

RWA Wealth made its first acquisition since the merger in August in a deal for a San Francisco-based RIA. 

In addition to Massachusetts, the RIA has offices in California, Florida, Michigan and Illinois. It has private wealth and family office divisions and is run by CEO Michelle Knight. Knight had been the president and chief economist of Ropes Wealth Advisors before taking the CEO role of the rebranded firm.