Capturing the Growth of Venture-Backed Companies

Research Paper
Mehdi Alighanbari, Victoria Abdullina, Lavanay Thakral
August 13, 2025

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Private, venture-backed companies are no longer just early-stage startups. They’re global innovators, scaling fast and staying private longer. From AI to space tech, many of today’s most transformative companies aren’t listed, leaving a significant gap for public-market investors.

The MSCI All Country Venture-Backed Private Company Indexes are designed to bring structure, transparency and access to this formerly elusive, rapidly evolving asset class. 

What’s inside the paper? 
  • How MSCI identifies and tracks top private firms backed by venture capital 
  • Why traditional benchmarks have fallen short in capturing the rapid growth in this space 
  • How the MSCI All Country Venture-backed Top 50 Index has stacked up against global public equity markets 
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The VC-backed company index has outperformed listed equities since late 2024
This is a line chart tracking the performance of four indexes from February 2023 to May 2025. The MSCI All Country Venture-Backed Company Top 50 Index and the USA Information Technology Index show the strongest performance, both rising significantly above the others by the end of the period. The Venture-Backed Index shows a sharp acceleration starting around early 2024, finishing as one of the top performers. The MSCI World Index delivers steady but moderate gains, while the MSCI World Small Cap Index remains relatively flat with minimal growth. The chart highlights the strong relative outperformance of venture-backed private companies compared to traditional public equity benchmarks.

Date range is Feb. 28, 2023, to May 30, 2025. Returns are gross total return in USD.

Mehdi Alighanbari
Mehdi Alighanbari
Executive Director, MSCI Research & Development
Victoria Abdullina
Victoria Abdullina
Executive Director, MSCI Research & Development
Lavanay Thakral
Lavanay Thakral
Associate, MSCI Research & Development

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Private companies driving global innovation.

 

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