The Largest US University Endowments (2026): How the Endowment Model Invests

Executive Summary

Only a few dozen university endowments clear $8 billion, but their investment offices helped define how institutional capital invests in private markets, and they remain among the most sought-after limited partners for private equity and venture funds.

Harvard runs the largest at $56.9 billion. Yale follows at $44.1 billion, then Stanford at $40.8 billion, Princeton at $35.7 billion, and MIT at $27.4 billion. What matters for fundraising is the allocation, not the size. Endowments invented the approach now called the endowment model: heavy weighting to private equity, venture capital, and other illiquid strategies, funded by a long time horizon and a tolerance for lockups that most investors cannot match. The largest endowments commit among the highest shares of any investor class to private markets, often 30 percent or more to private asset classes including private equity and venture capital, per the 2025 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments, with the over-$1-billion cohort allocating the most.

For a GP, that combination of scale, sophistication, and a structural appetite for private markets is rare. Endowments run lean investment offices, they hold managers for a long time, and a single relationship can support a fund across vintages. They are harder to win than a pension because the bar for manager selection is high, but once won, they are among the most durable LPs a firm can have.

The table below ranks single-institution endowments. Every figure is the value the university itself reports, taken from its most recent financial report, endowment report, or official release. Fiscal-year ends differ, so the as-of date is shown for each. University-system endowments, which aggregate multiple campuses, are listed separately below the table.

The Largest US University Endowments by Reported Value

University-System Endowments

Two of the largest pools of university endowment capital belong to multi-campus systems rather than a single school, so they sit outside the ranking above:

Why Endowments Anchor Private Equity and Venture Fundraising

The endowment model started at Yale under David Swensen and spread across the largest endowments: lean on public stocks and bonds, lean heavily into private equity, venture capital, real assets, and hedge funds. The logic is that a perpetual institution can accept illiquidity in exchange for higher returns, and that the best private managers compound that advantage over decades.

The result is that the largest endowments hold a far higher private-markets weighting than almost any other LP type. For a GP, three features follow:

Private-markets appetite. An endowment with a large private-markets allocation is structurally short the asset class as older funds distribute, so it has to keep committing. The demand is built into the model.

Manager selection over breadth. Endowments back a concentrated set of managers and prize access to the best ones, especially in venture, where returns are highly dispersed. Winning an endowment is about being one of the few, not one of the many.

Long memory. Endowment offices are small and stable, and they re-up with managers they trust across vintages. The relationship, once earned, tends to last.

How GPs Actually Engage Endowments

Endowments are harder to reach than pensions in one sense and easier in another. They publish less, run smaller teams, and do not move on fixed public pacing calendars, so the public-record approach that works for pensions reaches only part of the picture. But the universe is small and well defined, the investment leadership is known, and the manager networks overlap heavily, so a warm, specific introduction carries more weight than it would with a large bureaucratic plan.

Most firms treat every large pool of capital the same way. Endowments reward the opposite: a short list, deep preparation on why a strategy fits that specific office, and an introduction through a credible mutual relationship.

For the full institutional universe, including pensions, foundations, insurers, and family offices alongside these endowments, see the investor directory. For how a primary-source raise is run, see fundraising and capital formation.

Sources & Methodology

Each figure is the value the institution itself reports for its endowment, from its most recent financial report, endowment report, or official release. Where a university distinguishes a broader investment pool from its named endowment, the named-endowment figure is used (for example, Stanford's endowment of $40.8 billion rather than its larger Merged Pool, the University of Virginia endowment within UVIMCO's larger Long Term Pool, and Notre Dame's endowment of about $20.1 billion rather than its larger total investment portfolio of about $25.8 billion). Figures are most recent available; Rice is shown as of its FY2024 report because it has not yet published an FY2025 endowment value. Fiscal-year ends differ, so the as-of date is shown for each. Private-equity and venture allocation context is from the NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments; per-school allocations vary.

Primary sources: Harvard FY2025 Financial Report, Yale FY2025 release, Stanford FY2025 report, Princeton Report of the Treasurer, MIT FY2025 release, Penn FY2025 Financial Report, Michigan FY2025, Notre Dame FY2025 Annual Report, Columbia FY2025, Northwestern FY2025 Endowment Report, Johns Hopkins FY2025 financial statements, WashU endowment, Duke endowment, Cornell FY2025 statement, University of Chicago FY2025, Vanderbilt FY2025 Financial Report, USC Endowment Report 2024-25, Dartmouth Endowment Report 2025, Emory FY2025 audited statements, Rice FY2024 Endowment Update, Brown FY2025 release, UTIMCO assets under management, University of California FY2023-24 endowment report.