A fund's size sets the exit a company must produce

The record

The National Venture Capital Association's 2026 Yearbook, produced with PitchBook data and published 9 April 2026, reports the average US venture fund raised in 2025 at $127.4 million against a median of $26.0 million, a gap the same data pack shows widening in the mega-fund years: an average of $176.2 million in 2022 against a median of $29.3 million that year. The same dataset records the largest US venture fund closed to date at $4,600.0 million, raised in April 2025. Separately, California's public pension, in its own Fund Performance Review, lists a $1,950,000,000 commitment to one 2023-vintage venture fund among its active partnerships.

What the sources establish

An average and a median fund size measure different things, and the gap matters: the average is pulled upward by a few very large funds, while the median describes what a typical general partner actually raises. NVCA's own data shows the median holding in a narrow band, roughly $19 million to $33 million every year since 2013, while the average has swung far more, tracking the mega-fund cycles of 2021-2022. CalPERS' own disclosure corroborates the scale at the top: one $1.95 billion commitment is itself larger than the yearbook's total for an entire vintage year's first-time-fund cohort. Neither document states a formula linking fund size to the exit a company must produce; that connection is arithmetic, not something either source calculates.

Scope and revision

The yearbook's figures cover funds PitchBook classifies as venture capital, by vintage year of final close, as its data stood on 31 December 2025; funds it does not track are excluded. CalPERS' figure is one limited partner's stated commitment to one fund, not that fund's total size, and reflects only CalPERS' own disclosure, not a market average. Averages and medians can move as later-closing funds are added in a future edition, so a given year's number can still be revised.

The decision in front of you

Editorially: fund size sets the return a fund's own investors need. A $500 million fund promising a 3x net return must return $1.5 billion; if it owns 10% of a company at exit, that company must sell or list for roughly $15 billion, before later dilution, to be the fund's sole driver of return. A founder who knows a term sheet is coming from a fund near the large end of the yearbook's range can ask what ownership stake and exit size the fund's own math requires — a question the fund's economics, not its pitch, will answer.

• Is this fund's stated size close to the yearbook's mega-fund range or its median, and does that change what exit it needs?
• What ownership stake would this fund need at exit to reach a 3x fund return on its check size alone?
• Does the fund's stated strategy match the size bracket the yearbook associates with that strategy?

A fund's size is published, or discoverable; the exit math it implies rarely is. Reading the two together turns a number a founder is told into a number a founder can check.