The headlines about interval funds gating redemptions are alarming. But the real story is what most coverage gets wrong.
Something has been happening in the world of private investing. Major asset managers, names retail investors have come to trust, have been locking people out of their own money. Blue Owl Capital halted quarterly redemptions on one of its private credit funds in February 2026. [1] BlackRock’s HPS Corporate Lending Fund hit its 5% withdrawal cap for the first time in its history. [2] Ares Strategic Income Fund capped redemptions at 5% after investor withdrawal requests surged to 11.6% of net asset value. [3] Morgan Stanley and Cliffwater followed suit. [4] In just a few months, billions of dollars in requested redemptions went nowhere.
For anyone who put money into these vehicles expecting accessible capital twice a year, the experience has been disorienting. And the natural reaction reading those headlines, is to wonder whether the interval fund structure itself is broken.
It isn’t. What broke was the strategy inside those funds, and understanding that distinction matters enormously if you’re thinking about where to put your money.
What actually went wrong
Private credit interval funds were built on a straightforward pitch: access the higher yields of private lending, with some liquidity built in. The market grew fast. According to Morningstar, by the end of 2025, assets in funds holding private assets with limited liquidity had grown to over $534 billion, adding roughly $100 billion in a single year. [5]
The problem was a mismatch hiding in plain sight. Private credit funds make loans to companies. Those loans have terms of five to seven years and they aren’t publicly traded. In most market conditions, you can’t sell them quickly. The interval fund wrapper offered investors the ability to withdraw up to 5% per quarter, which sounds reasonable until withdrawal requests hit 10, 11, or 15% of net asset value simultaneously. At that point, fund managers face a choice: sell loans at a steep discount to meet redemptions, or gate the fund and tell investors they’ll have to wait.
Most chose to wait. BlackRock, in announcing its cap, described it as preventing a “structural mismatch between investor capital and the expected duration of the private credit loans” in the fund. [2] In the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, investors in private credit funds with over $1 billion in assets withdrew $2.9 billion, a 200% increase from the prior quarter, according to research firm Robert A. Stanger & Co. [5]
The interval fund structure didn’t fail. A strategy that promised liquidity it couldn’t deliver did.
Nicolas Roth, head of private markets advisory at UBP, told CNBC the current wave of redemption pressure represents the first real liquidity test for private credit at scale, and that the adjustment period will separate platforms with real liquidity buffers from those that relied on subscription momentum to finance exits. [3]
The fundamental difference: Jetstream’s investment thesis
Jetstream Venture Fund is an interval fund. We want to be clear about that, because the structure itself is sound and we believe in it. But what we invest in is entirely different from the private credit funds that have been making headlines.
We invest in equity. Specifically, ownership stakes in early-stage technology and healthcare companies. Not loans. Not debt instruments. Not interest-bearing products where a borrower can default and leave you holding a depleted loan book.
When you hold equity in a growing company, the dynamics are fundamentally different from holding a loan. There is no borrower who can stop making payments. There is no maturity date where you’re waiting to get principal back. The value of the position is tied to the company’s growth, and it can be assessed and reported transparently.
When combined with allocations to publicly traded equities, secondaries, and liquid money market instruments, an equity-based portfolio can be structured to actually support the liquidity windows it promises. This is not an abstract distinction. It’s the reason our portfolio construction is built the way it is.
If you would like to speak with someone about investing in the Jetstream Venture Fund, schedule a call with one of our portfolio managers here.
VC interval funds are different than private credit interval funds.
There’s a reason institutional investors, university endowments, and family offices have allocated to venture capital for decades. Cambridge Associates data covering over 2,600 U.S. venture capital (VC) funds formed between 1981 and 2024 shows the asset class has delivered strong long-term net returns. The U.S. Venture Capital Index generated approximately 14 to 18% annualized over the ten-year period ending 2023, and top-quartile early-stage funds have historically exceeded 25% net IRR over the same horizon. [6] Past performance is not indicative of future results, and venture capital carries significant risk, including the possible loss of principal.
For most of that history, access was tightly controlled. Minimum commitments were usually $250,000 to $500,000 or more, with ten-year lockups with no liquidity path. Not to mention this also included complex K-1 tax reporting. The people building the companies shaping healthcare, technology, and life sciences were largely unavailable to investors most interested in owning them.
The interval fund structure changes that. There are no ten-year lockups. Investors get semi-annual liquidity windows sized to what the fund can realistically support. Fund managers stake a flat management fee rather than carried interest – where investors take a cut of every dollar of profit. The tax reporting requirement is a simplified 1099-DIV. The minimum investment starts at $5,000 rather than hundreds of thousands.
There is another structural difference that matters: Jetstream has one share class.
Some private funds separate investors into different share classes based on the size of their investment. Jetstream is built differently. Whether someone invests $5,000 or $1 million, they invest in the same share class, with the same terms and the same fee structure.
That means the fund is not designed to reserve better terms for the biggest investors. Every investor participates on equal footing.
Venture equity and the interval fund structure are genuinely compatible in a way that private credit never was. The strategy fits the wrapper.
What makes liquidity possible with Jetstream?
We aren’t dismissive of the question. Investors should probe any interval fund hard on this point.
Jetstream aims to blend private equity positions with allocations to public equities, secondaries, and high-yield money market instruments. Liquid holdings create a buffer that allows us to meet redemption requests without being forced sellers of private positions at the wrong time. This isn’t a theoretical design choice. It’s what separates a fund that can keep its promises from one that can’t.
Our semi-annual repurchase offers are set at up to 5% of net assets per window. We set that number because we believe it reflects what the portfolio can support. These repurchase offerings may be oversubscribed, and investors should understand that as a real possibility. But the way we are building the portfolio is designed to make those windows real, not aspirational.
The team behind the investments
Structure matters – as does those constructing the fund. Jetstream’s portfolio managers have founded companies, scaled them, and sold them. Dr. John Shufeldt, MD, JD, MBA, founded and grew more than 15 companies across healthcare, technology, and education, including MeMD, acquired by Walmart Health, and NextCare Urgent Care, one of the nation’s largest urgent care networks. Michael Shufeldt is both a decorated A-10C fighter pilot and a healthcare entrepreneur with deep experience in early-stage company operations. Chris Yoo, PhD, brings a background in bioinformatics and commercialization. Douglas Sylvester, JD, LLM, works at the intersection of law, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
This team has built things. That background shapes how they evaluate founders, read market dynamics, and recognize when a company has real traction versus a compelling story. In early-stage investing, that distinction is where returns are made or lost.
Questions every investor should ask
Whether you’re looking at Jetstream or any other interval fund, the conversation should start with the underlying assets.
- What does the fund hold?
- How does the liquidity of those assets compare to the redemption promises being made?
- Has the fund ever gated or restricted withdrawals?
- What does the portfolio look like under stress?Ask about the fee structure.
- Ask whether carried interest is part of the equation.
- Ask about tax reporting.
- Ask what happens if redemption requests in a given window exceed capacity.
- Ask whether the fund has multiple share classes, and whether investors receive different terms based on how much they invest.
Any fund manager who deflects these questions is telling you something important.
If you want these kinds of questions answered about the Jetstream Venture Fund, we are happy to discuss these over a call. Simply book a call here and you can speak to a member of our team.
What the current moment actually tells us
The private credit redemption crisis of 2025 and 2026 is painful for the investors caught in it. But it is also clarifying. It has separated funds with genuine structural integrity from those that relied on favorable market conditions to paper over a fundamental mismatch.
The interval fund model is not in question. What’s in question is whether fund managers are honest about what their structure can and cannot do, and whether the assets they hold are genuinely suited to the wrapper they’ve chosen.
The right question isn’t whether interval funds work. It’s whether the fund you’re looking at was built to actually keep its word.
If you want to understand how Jetstream approaches that question, we’d like to have the conversation.
Sources
[1] Alternative Credit Investor. “Blue Owl gates retail private credit fund amid redemption pressure.” February 19, 2026. https://alternativecreditinvestor.com/2026/02/19/blue-owl-gates-retail-private-credit-fund-amid-redemption-pressure/
[2] AltsWire. “BlackRock’s HPS Corporate Lending Fund Limits Redemptions After Requests Exceed 5% Cap.” March 7, 2026. https://altswire.com/blackrocks-hps-corporate-lending-fund-limits-redemptions-after-requests-exceed-5-cap/
[3] AltsWire. “Ares Strategic Income Fund Fulfills 43.1% of First-Quarter Redemption Requests.” March 24, 2026. https://altswire.com/ares-strategic-income-fund-fulfills-43-1-of-first-quarter-redemption-requests/
[4] The Globe and Mail. “Ares caps withdrawals at private credit fund after redemption requests surge.” March 24, 2026. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ares-caps-withdrawals-at-private-credit-fund-after-redemption-requests/
[5] Wealth Management / Robert A. Stanger & Co.. “Private Credit Confronts the Limitations of the Semi-Liquid Label.” March 2026. https://www.wealthmanagement.com/alternative-investments/private-credit-confronts-the-limitations-of-the-semi-liquid-label
[6] PipelineRoad / Cambridge Associates. “Venture Capital Returns: Historical Performance, Benchmarks, and What LPs Expect.” February 2025. https://pipelineroad.com/blog/venture-capital-returns
