PitchBook counts a fund's capital on its final close date

The record

PitchBook's 2025 Annual Global Private Market Fundraising Report tracks capital raised by fund managers across nine strategies -- private equity, venture capital, real estate, real assets, private debt, funds of funds, secondaries and co-investment vehicles -- and states overall private capital fundraising fell 13.3% in 2025 with fund counts dropping sharply across most strategies, even as real assets and secondaries posted year-over-year gains. Access to the full PDF requires completing PitchBook's own download form; this entry rests on the report's public landing page rather than the gated document itself.

What the sources establish

PitchBook's separately published report methodologies page defines how a fund closing is counted: figures are based on the date of a fund's final close, with interim closes excluded and its entire committed capital "attributed to the quarter of the final close." Only closed-end vehicles are counted, with evergreen and open-ended fund capital excluded entirely. The same page defines a venture fund narrowly as capital raised to invest "in the equity of startup companies," and explicitly reclassifies growth-stage vehicles as private equity rather than venture capital.

Scope and revision

This is a fund-formation measure, not a deal-level one, and the two should not be merged. A $60.8 billion VC fundraising total that PitchBook's Q1 2026 quarterly edition attributes to that single quarter counts capital committed to funds that finally closed in that quarter -- regardless of when those funds later invest it -- while the separate Venture Monitor series counts capital invested into startups during a period. A fund that took eighteen months to close appears, in full, in one quarter of the fundraising series and nowhere else, even though its capital will be deployed into companies over several subsequent years of deal-level reporting.

The decision in front of you

Editorially: when citing a fundraising figure, confirm it comes from this fund-level series and its final-close convention, and never add it to or net it against a deal-level investment total as though the two measured the same flow of capital.

• Is this a fund-level fundraising figure attributed to a final close date, or a deal-level investment figure attributed to when a startup received capital?
• Does the fund in question count as a closed-end vehicle under PitchBook's definition, or would it be excluded as evergreen or open-ended?
• Is a growth-stage vehicle being counted here as venture capital, when PitchBook's own methodology classifies it as private equity?

PitchBook's fundraising and Venture Monitor series describe two different moments in a fund's life -- when LPs commit capital, and when that capital reaches a company -- and the methodology page is explicit that these should not be read as one continuous number.