#298: Q3 2025 Fund Performance Highlights
Aduro Advisors gave us a preview of its Q3 2025 Fund Performance Benchmark Report they’re releasing shortly, offering a structured, data-driven view of how private funds are performing across strategies, fund sizes, and vintage years. The report is built from fund-level source data rather than self-reported inputs, providing managers and LPs with a clearer baseline for comparison.
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Q3 Performance Trends Across Fund Sizes
The report’s tables and charts highlight how performance varies by size and stage of fund maturity. Rather than pointing to a single narrative, the data shows a range of outcomes depending on vintage year, market timing, and pacing.
We use this as one of our key data sets when evaluating relative fund performance as we approach year-end.
$0–$50mm Funds
Smaller funds often show wider dispersion in early returns.
Mature vintages (2014–2017) show median Net IRRs between 9–14%, with top quartile bands trending higher.
Recent vintages reflect early-stage development, where TVPI generally leads DPI as realizations are still limited.
The chart below illustrates how these funds typically normalize over time as portfolios season.
$50mm–$100mm Funds
Performance in this size range appears more stable across vintages.
Earlier funds show consistent distributions, with TVPI and MOIC stepping up predictably with maturity.
Newer vintages (2021–2024) show patterns consistent with a standard J-curve: low DPI but building unrealized value.
The visuals below highlight this trajectory across multiple time periods.
$100mm–$250mm Funds
Several vintages in this category show notable value creation relative to the broader dataset.
2014–2016 top quartile TVPIs range from 4.83x to 6.07x, reflecting meaningful outcomes for long-duration portfolios.
Newer vintages track closer to industry-wide trends, with unrealized value the primary driver of performance to date.
$250mm+ Funds
Larger funds generally demonstrate more moderate dispersion across vintages.
Median IRRs between 2019 and 2023 range from 0–13%, with top quartile outcomes illustrating the incremental upside available at scale.
Early metrics for 2023–2024 vintages reflect standard deployment-phase characteristics.
The chart below highlights how performance bands widen for the newest vintages where outcomes are still forming.
Takeaways
The Q3 2025 benchmark report provides a view of how different segments of the private markets are performing in today’s environment. Instead of pointing to a single defining trend, the data shows a spectrum of outcomes shaped by fund size, vintage timing, and market conditions. The value of Aduro’s approach is the ability to compare these dynamics using consistent, source-level data.
🎯 Tools to Navigate a More Selective, Quartile-Driven Market
A recurring theme in the Q3 Aduro report is how dispersion drives outcomes — not just across vintages, but within fund sizes. That’s why many GPs have been asking for more practical ways to pressure-test pacing, ownership, reserves, DPI timing, and the real impact of concentration.
Below are a few tools we use internally that can help you evaluate these decisions with more clarity:
