Ohio State University Endowment

Vishnu Srinivasan is the Chief Investment Officer and leads the Office of Investments (Altss research). He reports through the university's financial hierarchy, which includes CFO Michael Papadakis and ultimately President Walter Carter Jr. The investment committee structure is standard for public university endowments, with Board of Trustees oversight on major allocation decisions.

The university does not publish a real-time AUM figure, but public endowment pools of its scale typically fall in the $7–8 billion range (Altss estimate). Precise numbers appear in annual financial reports and NACUBO surveys, which Ohio State submits alongside peer institutions. The long-term pool excludes certain working capital and plant funds.

Yes — it owns and manages direct property in Columbus. The portfolio includes the South Campus Gateway mixed-use development, the South Campus Apartment Portfolio, and a land parcel in South Linden (public record). The Wexner Center for the Arts and its art collection also represent hard assets on the balance sheet. This direct ownership model is unusual among large public endowments.

The endowment allocates across private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, natural resources, and infrastructure (public record). It has indirect cryptocurrency exposure, indicating comfort with digital assets through fund vehicles rather than direct coin holdings. Real estate, as noted, is a distinct carve-out with direct operational control.

The Wexner Center for the Arts is a university-owned contemporary art center on North High Street in Columbus. Its permanent collection — including an Andy Warhol photography series — sits on the endowment's balance sheet as a hard asset (public record). Leslie Wexner, the billionaire donor and Limited Brands founder, has been a long-term benefactor of the university and the center that bears his name.

The Office of Investments is an internal team operating from the university's Columbus headquarters. It manages asset allocation and direct real estate in-house, while external managers likely execute most public-market and specialized private-fund strategies. Most peer public endowments use a similar hybrid model, though Ohio State's direct property holdings are distinctive.

The Ohio State University Foundation is the university's primary fundraising and gift-receiving entity, operating separately from the endowment but tightly coordinated. Donations to the foundation ultimately flow into the endowment's long-term investment pool, supporting academic programs, research, and capital projects across the university.