Leaders in Private Equity Solutions
CF Private Equity (formerly Commonfund Capital) is a global private equity investment manager. We serve all types of institutional organizations and sophisticated investors —nonprofits and for-profits—and our tenured team seeks to partner with industry-leading managers and prominent investors to create investment solutions that cover a broad range of global opportunities.
$0
billion in committed capital since 1988
>0
years of private capital investing
>0
manager advisory boards
0
partnerships**
**Includes all investment partnership structures that are full-liquidated funds, as well as, open funds and separate accounts. Excludes funds that have not yet had a first close and feeder-fund structures.
Private equity, venture capital, sustainability, and natural resources solutions
CF Private Equity seeks to combine the scale of a leading global asset manager with the nimble flexibility of a focused boutique, with access to many of the world’s leading managers in private equity, venture capital, sustainability, and natural resources strategies. Our global portfolios are constructed with a diversified mix of primaries, secondaries, and co-investments, with a focus on smaller and growing companies backed by geographic and sector specialist general partners.
Targeted investment solutions
We provide a diverse range of targeted investment solutions, each managed by an experienced team of investment professionals.
- Buyouts & Growth Equity
- Venture Capital
- Sustainability
- Natural Resources
- Co-investments
- Secondaries
Complete Solutions
For investors who need a comprehensive private equity solution, we offer a single solution that combines our buyouts and growth equity, venture capital and real assets programs-including natural resources and sustainable investments.
Customized Account Solutions
We partner with a select number of larger investors to build customized solutions in private equity. We work collaboratively to tailor programs, often structured as a “fund-of-one", in private equity and real assets (including natural resources and sustainable sectors and strategies) to meet the portfolio needs of our investors. These relationships range from comprehensive multi-strategy mandates to completion portfolios focused on a particular geography or strategy. In addition to direct primary managers, custom accounts may also include exposure to secondaries and co-investments.
Learn more about what we do for our Private Equity clients
Frequently Asked Questions
CF Private Equity provides globally diversified programs across buyouts and growth equity; venture capital, including venture direct and blockchain; and real assets and sustainability, covering natural resources and environmental strategies. Portfolios are constructed with a diversified mix of primaries, secondaries, and co-investments, with a focus on smaller and growing companies backed by sector and geographic specialist general partners. Investors can access these strategies through commingled funds, customized separate accounts, or dedicated secondaries and co-investment programs. CF Private Equity has invested across private markets for more than three decades. Click here to learn more.
Venture capital is a subset of private equity. Venture funds back early-stage companies, take minority positions, use little or no leverage, and depend on a small number of outcomes to drive fund returns. Buyouts and growth equity — what most investors mean by private equity — involve control or near-control positions in established, often cash-flow-positive companies, frequently using leverage, with value created through operational improvement. Both are illiquid, long-dated limited partnerships, and in both the choice of manager drives the outcome — the range of results is widest in venture.
Four factors: size, liquidity, time, and diversification. A private equity allocation must be large enough to affect total portfolio return, which means institutions generally need a threshold level of investable assets before committing to illiquid strategies at all. Liquidity comes next — model spending and liability needs under both normal and stressed scenarios, then set the illiquidity budget the portfolio can genuinely support. Time matters because allocations are built gradually and require overcommitment to reach target. And diversification across strategy and vintage year is essential: a single fund in a single year is not an allocation.