Texas TRS reports one private equity number, not a venture one

The record

The Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS) reports its private equity performance inside its own 2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, covering the fiscal year ended 31 August 2025. The investment section states Private Equity's fair value at $34.5 billion, 15.32% of the $225.3 billion total fund, against a 12% long-term policy target, and names 'Venture/Growth Equity' as one of the strategy's sub-categories alongside corporate finance, distressed debt and special situations. Its external manager list, published in the same report, names venture firms including Insight Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Polaris Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Radical Ventures. TRS's resource library hosts this and prior years' comprehensive financial reports as a standing publication.

What the sources establish

TRS states that its private equity benchmark is a 'Customized State Street Private Equity Index lagged one quarter,' and reports time-weighted returns, net of bank, external manager, legal, research and custodial fees, calculated independently by its custodian, State Street Bank and Trust. As of 30 June 2025, TRS states private equity returned 7.60% over one year, 3.85% over three years, 16.14% over five years and 12.25% over ten years, against benchmark returns of 14.37%, 12.78%, 14.19% and 9.72% for the same periods respectively. TRS does not report a return figure isolated to venture or growth equity alone; the disclosed figures cover the private equity asset class as a whole.

Scope and revision

TRS's own report states that because its fiscal year ends 31 August, 'the most complete performance and benchmark information by asset class is available as of June 30, 2025' rather than the fiscal year-end date, an explicit two-month reporting lag built into the fund's own annual disclosure. The report also notes that administrative expenses for its investment management division are not netted against the performance figures, a scope distinction that separates portfolio return from the cost of running the program. Because Venture/Growth Equity is disclosed only as a named sub-strategy inside the broader private equity return, a reader cannot back out a Texas-specific venture-only return from this report alone.

The decision in front of you

An analyst citing a TRS private equity return should state the June 30 as-of date TRS itself uses rather than the fund's August 31 fiscal year-end, and should not present the blended private equity figure as a venture-specific number, since TRS's own report does not disaggregate it that way. This is editorial: the useful reading of a large public fund's fund selection is as one large, Texas-specific portfolio, not as a stand-in for market-wide venture performance.

• Are you using the June 30 performance as-of date TRS itself uses, or conflating it with the August 31 fiscal year-end?
• Does the figure you are quoting cover all of private equity, or only the venture and growth equity sub-strategy TRS names but does not separately measure?
• Is the benchmark you are comparing against built with the same one-quarter lag TRS applies to its own custom index?

TRS's scale and manager roster make it a meaningful single data point, and its own report is explicit that the point describes Texas's fund selection, not the venture market at large.