Venture Capital Fund Performance by Vintage Year: 2026 Benchmarks

Data sourced from Dakota Private Markets, the private fund performance platform powered by Dakota. Learn More | Request Access

Dakota Private Markets tracks performance on over 16,000 funds across private equity, venture capital, private credit, real assets, and real estate, giving investment firms the data needed to benchmark managers and monitor vintage-year performance.

This post breaks down venture capital fund performance by vintage year using Dakota's benchmark dataset, covering 1,111 tracked VC fund performance records across vintages 2006 through 2026, from funds that have barely started calling capital to funds now nine years into harvest.

The Data

The table below shows quartile benchmarks by vintage year, Net IRR, TVPI, and DPI, pulled from Dakota's VC performance dataset in September 2026. Sample size matters here: 2017 through 2024 vintages carry real statistical weight (41 to 92 funds each), while 2025 and 2026 are still too thin to read as market signal rather than noise.

*The 198.00% maximum on the 2021 vintage sits well above every other vintage's ceiling (all under 82%). Confirm this against the source record before it's cited elsewhere.

**2026 vintage figures come from just 4 funds. One strong performer moves the median meaningfully; treat this row as a preview, not a benchmark.

1. The J-Curve Is Working as Designed, Not Failing

Every vintage from 2022 through 2025 shows a median DPI at or below 0.18x. That's expected. Venture funds spend their first three to five years calling capital and marking portfolio companies up on paper, not returning cash. A 2024-vintage fund with a 2.75% median Net IRR hasn't underperformed anything; it's barely had time to exist.

Why it matters for fund managers approaching allocators right now:

• Allocators evaluating a 2023, 2024, or 2025-vintage fund can't use IRR or DPI as a meaningful yardstick yet. TVPI and the pace of markups are more relevant early signals.
• Framing a young fund's performance against a 2017 or 2018-vintage benchmark invites an unfair comparison. Vintage-matched comparisons are the only valid ones.
• The market's patience for J-curve funds is lower than in past cycles, given the distribution drought below. Managers should address the timeline question directly rather than waiting for it to come up.

2. 2017 to 2019 Vintages Show What Maturity Actually Looks Like

The three oldest vintages in Dakota's dataset (2017, 2018, 2019) post the highest median Net IRRs (10.93% to 14.77%) and the highest median TVPI (1.50x to 1.87x) of any cohort. They also carry the highest median DPI of the mature vintages: 2017 sits at 0.73x, more than triple the DPI of 2022 or 2023-vintage funds.

That gap is the clearest evidence in the dataset that time, not just fund quality, drives distributions. These funds have had six to nine years to exit positions through M&A or IPO, a window funds raised more recently haven't had, particularly with IPO activity constrained for most of the past several years.

Request access to see how Dakota Private Markets benchmarks a fund's Net IRR, TVPI, DPI, and RVPI against its actual vintage-year peer group, not a blended index that lumps six-year-old funds in with six-month-old ones.

3. Wide Dispersion Means the Median Understates Both the Opportunity and the Risk

Look at the Net IRR range column, not just the median. The 2022 vintage spans -19.81% to 81.04%. The 2021 vintage spans -23.40% to 198.00% (outlier aside). This is venture capital's power law showing up in benchmark data: Cambridge Associates' 2026 outlook notes that nearly 90% of the asset class's value has historically come from the top 10% of underlying companies.

For allocators, manager selection carries more weight in venture than in almost any other private asset class; the median fund and the top-quartile fund aren't close. For fund managers, a strong top-quartile position is worth emphasizing specifically rather than leading with a blended portfolio number that undersells standout positions.

4. 2025 and 2026 Vintages: Too Early to Benchmark

The 2025 and 2026 vintage data above is presented for completeness, but neither should be read as a market signal. The 2025 cohort (n=45) shows a median Net IRR of exactly 0.00%, a function of most funds still being in their capital-call phase, not a verdict on fund quality. The 2026 cohort (n=4) is too small to support any conclusion at all; one fund's performance is currently moving the median by double digits.

Allocators sizing up funds from either vintage should ask managers directly about deployment pace and initial markups rather than requesting IRR or DPI figures that don't yet mean anything.

Uncover Venture Capital Market Intelligence with Dakota Private Markets

Dakota Private Markets tracks account and contacts in venture capital, filterable by vintage year, fund size, IRR percentile, and sector focus, benchmarked against the peer group that actually matches where a fund sits in its life. Knowing exactly where a fund stands against the right cohort makes for a stronger allocator conversation.

Get access to Dakota Private Markets and see TVPI, DPI, RVPI, and Net IRR standardized at the fund level across 1,100+ tracked venture capital funds spanning vintages 2006 through 2026, benchmarked against the peer group that actually matches where a fund sits in its life.

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