风险投资是否改善投资组合结果还是使其复杂化？

Does VC ImprovePortfolio Outcomes An Allocator Solutions report assessingventure’s performance and implications Contents Key takeaways Institutional Research Group Kaidi GaoSenior Research Analyst,Venture Capital Introduction4 Assessing historical VC performance Nathan Schwartz, CFASenior QuantitativeResearch Analyst Drivers of VC risk and return VC’s contribution to portfolio-level outcomes pbinstitutionalresearch@pitchbook.com VC’s role in portfolio construction Published on January 13, 2026 Key takeaways •VC as an asset class has delivered mid-tier returns withinprivate markets rather than persistent outperformance.Over the long run, aggregate VC returns have broadly Liquidity dynamics remain a structural challenge forallocations. VC distributions are persistently lower and morevolatile than those of other private market strategies, driven Average portfolios with VC allocations haveunderperformed portfolios that instead invested in publicgrowth equities. Our portfolio simulation framework showsthat, on average, substituting public growth equities for •Diversification benefits from VC are more limited thancommonly perceived. VC’s correlation with public equities—particularly growth-oriented benchmarks—has remained •Reported VC returns materially understate volatility.After adjusting for appraisal-based effects, VC exhibitsthe highest estimated volatility across public and private Manager selection is a key determinant of whether VC addsor detracts from portfolio outcomes. Power-law dynamicsmean a small subset of funds drives a large portion of value Introduction The pursuit of diversified and uncorrelated sources of returnshas long been a central motivation for allocating to privatemarkets. Periods in which US public equity returns becomeheavily concentrated in a narrow set of themes or individual risk premiums in the past decade, which encouraged investorsto seek higher-risk-premium assets. These trends suggestthat allocators view private equity, including VC, as a way to When incorporating VC allocations into portfolios, however,there is often a gap between what investors expect VCto provide and what investors actually experience. Thisreport offers a VC-focused review of several PitchBookresearch pieces aimed at allocators and examines how VC’sperformance and risk characteristics affect portfolios.2We According to data from Public Plans Data,1over the past 20years, pension plans have steadily increased their allocationsto private equity, which, depending on plan reporting, mayinclude VC. The average allocation to private market equity Assessing historical VCperformance valuations, and an unprecedented IPO and exit cycle. In 2021,US VC-backed exits generated $864.2 billion—an exceptionalhigh-water mark—across 2,060 transactions, with deal value VC is often associated with outsized successes and high-flyingreturns, though those outcomes tend to overrepresent a smallsubset of realized results. While some individual investments From late 2021 through 2024, however, VC’s cumulativereturn profile weakened meaningfully before stabilizing. Thisretrenchment reflects a broader slowdown in the asset class,marked by weaker distributions, compressed valuations, slowerdealmaking, and more selective capital deployment. Over the PitchBook’s Private Capital Indexes provide a useful startingpoint for comparing private market asset class performance.3Over the past 15 years, the PitchBook US VC Index generatedan annual return of 13.5%, which was marginally ahead ofthe aggregate US private capital benchmark but still trailed VC’s fluctuating performance relative to other private marketstrategies is mirrored in its behavior compared with publicmarkets. Examining the Kaplan-Schoar public marketequivalent (KS-PME) for VC vintages provides a general senseof how the asset class has performed compared with the S&P500 and the Nasdaq Composite. The Nasdaq Composite serves Vintages that deployed during the post-dot-com-bubble VCwinter produced weaker outcomes, with many mid- to late-2000s vintages failing to keep pace with public equities.By contrast, vintages that deployed capital after the globalfinancial crisis (GFC) and during the zero-interest-rate regimebenefited from the accommodative market conditions, While long-horizon returns provide one perspective on VC’sperformance, they do not fully capture how the asset classbehaves within a broader portfolio. To assess whether VC hasdelivered diversification benefits in practice, it is necessary toexamine how its returns have moved relative to public marketsover time. Historically, VC has been less correlated with theS&P 500 than PE and private debt. VC’s relationship with public Since 2024, correlations have declined across most privatestrategies, though VC has seen only a marginal decrease. Thisdivergence potentially reflects the valuation support from AI-related activity, which has bolstered valuations and investorsentiment within VC more than in