There is not yet enough lifecycle data on 2023‑and‑later VC vintages to know whether they will ultimately outperform the 2021 vintage.

Venture funds typically have 10–15+ year lives, with DPI (actual cash returned) and final performance only becoming clear many years in. Industry analyses of VC and PE J‑curves show that most DPI is generated roughly years 6–16, and that typical VC funds may not even reach 1x DPI within a 15‑year window. Early‑life TVPI/IRR are known to be noisy and not reliable predictors of final outcomes.(medium.com) Since the 2021 vintage is only about four years old and 2023+ vintages are around two years old as of late 2025, both cohorts are still in the early, illiquid phase.

Available data mainly shows that the 2021 vintage has been weak so far: Carta and Wall Street Journal reporting indicate that more than 90% of 2021 US VC funds have made no distributions yet and that their median IRR is slightly negative three years in, underperforming earlier vintages.(wsj.com) Early signs for the 2023 vintage are somewhat more encouraging at the top end (e.g., high 90th‑percentile IRR), but median TVPI for 2021–2023 vintages still hovers around 1x and DPI across 2018–2023 vintages remains near zero, meaning very little has actually been realized.(sourcery.vc) Because the prediction concerns ultimate average performance of vintages 2023+ versus 2021, and we are still far from the period when final DPI and total returns can be observed, the prediction cannot yet be definitively scored.