CalSTRS names every fund, then says its IRR is unconfirmed

The record

CalSTRS, the California teachers' pension fund, publishes its own Private Equity Portfolio Performance report as of 30 June 2025, listing every partnership by vintage year alongside capital committed, contributed and distributed, market value and since-inception net IRR. The schedule names venture funds including ARCH Venture Fund VI (vintage 2004), Blue Run Ventures IV and V, Clearstone Venture Partners III-A, Frazier Healthcare Ventures V, Institutional Venture Partners XVIII, NEA 18 Venture Growth Equity, Shasta Ventures II through V, Sofinnova Venture Partners VIII and IX, and Summit Partners Venture Capital III-A and IV-A. CalSTRS's own private equity portfolio performance page hosts this schedule as a standing public disclosure, separate from any figure CalPERS, a different California retirement system, publishes about its own portfolio.

What the sources establish

CalSTRS states its own IRR methodology directly: 'The limited partnership record keeping, including the internal rate of return or IRR, is maintained internally by CalSTRS for each limited partnership,' and that this 'method may differ from calculation methods used by the General Partner or other Limited Partners.' It names specific causes of divergence, including cash flow timing, carried interest accounting, management and advisory fees, and the sale of distributed stock, and states there is 'no industry-standardized method for valuation or reporting.' None of the figures in the schedule, CalSTRS states, 'has been reviewed or approved by the General Partners of the Funds.'

Scope and revision

CalSTRS states that until a partnership is liquidated, typically over ten to twelve years, its listed IRR 'is only an interim estimated return,' and that IRRs from a partnership's first three years are 'particularly not meaningful.' The schedule also flags that purchases of secondary interests create their own comparison problems, since pricing and timing at the point of purchase differ from an original limited partnership commitment. Because vintage years in this schedule range from the 1990s to 2025, a reader averaging IRRs across vintages without matching maturity would blend funds CalSTRS itself says are not yet comparable to older ones.

The decision in front of you

A founder or analyst checking whether a specific manager raised money from CalSTRS, and on what vintage and terms, can find that fund by name in this schedule rather than relying on a market-wide venture estimate. This is editorial: the appropriate use of a young fund's listed IRR is to note it as CalSTRS's own interim, unconfirmed estimate for that specific vintage, not as a settled judgment on the manager or a proxy for CalSTRS's whole venture book.

• Is the fund you are checking old enough that CalSTRS's own three-year threshold for meaningful IRR has passed?
• Was the commitment a primary partnership investment or a secondary purchase, which the schedule says complicates comparison?
• Are you comparing this figure to a CalPERS figure as though the two funds' methodologies and portfolios were interchangeable?

CalSTRS's schedule is a genuine fund-by-fund record with its own stated limits; those limits, not a single headline IRR, are what a careful reader should carry forward.