MIT endowment posts 2.9% loss for fiscal year

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, said the university's "Pool A" primary investment pool, dominated by MIT's endowment assets, produced a return of -2.9% for the fiscal year ended June 30, citing a fall in the valuations of companies in the university's venture capital portfolio.

An annual report released Oct. 6 by Glen Shor, MIT Corp.'s executive vice president and treasurer, said the market value of investments in the university's endowment funds declined 4.7% to $23.5 billion, excluding pledges for endowed purposes, driven by losses on endowment investments and "the distribution of pooled endowment gains to support current-year operations."

MIT's endowment-dominated primary investment pool reported a net -5.3% return for the prior fiscal year, ended June 30, 2022.The endowment fund effectively continued to give back some of the ground it gained the year before that when MIT announced a 55.5% return for the fiscal year through June 2021.

The corporation's net assets, which include MIT's endowment as well as other university-related funds, were down 3.2% for the year at $32.2 billion.

Investments at fair value, meanwhile, were $30.7 billion, down 5.7% on the year. Of that total, allocations to equities, public and private, came to just over 70% of the portfolio as of June 30, with private equity accounting for just less than half of that total — little changed from the year before. Allocations to real estate and fixed income, meanwhile, stood at 16.3% and 11%, respectively — again, largely in line with the previous year.

An MIT spokesperson couldn't immediately be reached for further comment.