Key Points
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. Investment firms of the ultra wealthy are known for their patience, preferring to invest for decades or even generations. Family office investors have also shown they are willing to wait for the dust to settle on President Donald Trump ‘s tariffs before inking new deals. In the first six months of 2025, family offices made 375 direct investments in companies, a 32% year-over-year drop, according to data provided exclusively to CNBC by Fintrx. Investments fell in every sector, including technology and health care and life sciences, the two most popular deal categories in 2024 and 2025, according to Fintrx, a private wealth intelligence platform. Only artificial intelligence-related companies saw a growth in direct investments, which rose from 55 to 71. However, family offices are showing more discretion when it comes to betting on AI, according to PwC’s Jonathan Flack, who leads the consulting giant’s U.S. and global family office practice. Family offices, especially those that are less comfortable with technology investing, are taking a picks and shovels approach by investing in the infrastructure around AI, he said. “They are actually making investments in the data centers and the hard assets that are going to be needed to support AI and the growth of AI,” Flack said. Health-care investing is somewhat resilient, between the demands on the health-care system and the rise of AI-enabled biotech startups, he said. For instance, he said, medical diagnostics startups have great potential given the expected cuts as Trump’s tax-and-spending law is expected to put pressure on rural health care. Broadly speaking, family offices have become choosier about their venture capital investments, according to Vicki Odette, a lawyer who advises family offices, funds and institutional investors. The exit slowdown means they have less capital to redeploy, she said. “I’m just seeing a lot more scrutiny,” said Odette, a partner at Haynes Boone. “They’re really looking for deals where they can actually see, in the near term, much more of a profitable path.” That said, her clients aren’t sitting idly on the sidelines. Opportunistic family offices are showing interest in secondary funds, which have surged in popularity as institutional investors seek liquidity, she said. Whether deal-making will rebound by the end of the year is another question of patience. Flack said he expects deal-making not to recover, but to rise slightly in the second half of 2025. “I still see where there’s a outsized percentage of undeployed capital at family offices,” he said. “I think that as you get towards the end of this year, they’re going to want to get into some deals.” Odette said family offices would need more clarity on tariffs in order for investments in U.S. firms to meaningfully pick up. However, she has seen a recent shift in family offices, even domestic ones, looking overseas, and she expects that to last. “Most of the deals that we’re seeing are really focused in in Europe and abroad,” she said. “We’re seeing a lot of family offices build more cross-border syndicates, where they’re all talking to each other to look for new sources of alpha that are outside the U.S.”
