Early Look at FY26 Endowment Returns

This week, we’re taking an early look at FY26 endowment performance, as a number of universities have released their results in recent weeks.

We are still waiting on returns from several high performing endowments, including Bowdoin College, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Michigan State, Princeton, Purdue, the University of Michigan, and Yale, all of which will appear on OWL’s Endowment Returns table as soon as their 2026 returns are published.

It is well known that SpaceX’s IPO and the rising valuations of Anthropic and OpenAI contributed meaningfully to certain endowments’ performance, in particular UNC and WashU. We covered other schools that likely had exposure in our June newsletter on SpaceX, and also highlighted the University of Michigan’s direct investment in OpenAI.

As a reminder, OWL users can now follow more than 15,000 allocators whose data we track on the platform and receive alerts when new items such as returns are posted.

Endowment returns are also part of OWL’s new customized email alert system, which users can adjust their preferences for under their account settings on OWL.

OWL is an intelligence platform built for allocators, by allocators. Leading endowments, foundations, and family offices use the system to find, monitor, and connect with thousands of fund managers globally. OWL's analytics engine has collected over one billion data points from 65 countries. We make it easy for allocators to find and track information about the managers they care about – not just positions but also performance analytics, people data, business information, and details about the manager investments of other allocators.

Returns represent the return on invested capital of publicly disclosed long positions, as calculated by OWL. Actual returns may vary based on a number of factors, including (but not limited to) undisclosed positions, short exposure, non-equity holdings, cash holdings, and lagged disclosure of positions.

This newsletter and the material on the Old Well Labs platform are for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, manager, or strategy. Certain investment managers, funds, or limited partners (“LPs”) referenced herein may be current or prospective clients of Old Well Labs, and Old Well Labs may have business relationships with such parties. Accordingly, references to any manager, fund, or LP should not be construed as an endorsement, recommendation, or solicitation. Old Well Labs shall not be liable for any investment gain or loss that may occur from the use of this material. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or used in any publication without express written permission from Old Well Labs.