Private equity and VC are generally interchangeable terms in that context. There's a difference between a VC that privately invites certain investors to invest,

Private equity and VC are generally interchangeable terms in that context. There's a difference between a VC that privately invites certain investors to invest, versus a publicly open mutual fund that anyone can buy into. And to complicate matters even more, there are publicly traded private equity partnerships (Blackrock, etc). tldr, jargon sucks