Amay Tewari

Yale’s endowment earned the University $4.5 billion in investment gains for the 2025 fiscal year, Yale announced in a Friday press release. 

The 11.1 percent return marks a four-year high for Yale’s investments office, up from a 5.7 percent return last fiscal year. Of the returns from the 2025 fiscal year, $2.1 billion were distributed to fund the University’s operating budget, while the remaining $2.3 billion stayed invested in the endowment, the press release said. The endowment’s total value stands at $44.1 billion as of June 30, 2025, making it the second-largest university endowment in the United States. 

“Yale’s endowment is structured to support the university’s mission in perpetuity through prudent risk-taking and sustainable spending,” Matt Mendelsohn, Yale’s chief investment officer, said in the press release. “Over the past decade, the university has spent $15.3 billion from its endowment, representing 60% of the endowment’s total value at the beginning of the period. This amount of operational support has been made possible by our strong investment results.”

The $4.5 billion in growth is the last set of endowment returns that will not be subject to an 8 percent tax on the endowment’s returns that will take effect beginning July 1, 2026. The tax increase from 1.4 percent to 8 percent was imposed by the Republican spending bill passed in July. Last month, the University said that its endowment strategy was “unlikely” to change in the face of the higher rate. 

When compared with other Ivy League schools, Yale’s return lands around the middle of a closely-clustered pack. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Princeton’s and Dartmouth’s investments returned 11 percent and 10.8 percent, respectively, while Harvard’s, Brown’s and Penn’s returned about 12 percent.

Last year, Yale’s endowment growth ranked second to last among the endowments of its Ivy League peers, topping Princeton’s returns of 3.9 percent while remaining behind Brown’s and Harvard’s at 11.3 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively. 

The growth figure for the 2025 fiscal year was nearly 3 percentage points higher than the 8.25 percent required in order to account for inflation and cover budgetary expenses, according to the Office of Financial Planning and Analysis. The portion of the endowment that is allocated to the University’s operating budget covers more than one-third of Yale’s total expenses in any given year, according to a Yale Investments webpage. 

According to the University’s latest financial report, the 11.1 percent return will be incorporated into its operating budget starting July 2026.

Over the 2024 fiscal year, the University reported a “net surplus in operating results,” which means the University spent less than outlined in the official budget. This surplus, in combination with the success of various budget-saving measures over the summer, allowed the University to end a summer hiring freeze and keep its operating budget unchanged for the rest of the 2025 fiscal year. 

For fiscal year 2027, however, schools and departments will have to reduce their budget targets to offset the endowment tax hike, University administrators announced in September.

The Yale Investments Office was an early venture capitalist investor in Snapchat, Airbnb and LinkedIn, Fortune reported in 2016.