key points
- Ultra Dhani’s private investment firms made 375 direct direct investments in 325% annual decline in the first half of 2025.
- Family offices are still showing interest in difficult assets required by AI, such as data centers, and abroad as well.
- Experts at the family office told CNBC that the firms needed capital that they need to be deployed, but are waiting for clarity around tariffs and geopolitics.
A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC’s Inside Wealth Newsletter along with Robert Frank, a weekly guide for a high-apene investor and consumer. Sign up to get future versions, directly on your inbox. Ultra rich investment firms are known for their patience, prefer to invest for decades or even generations. Investors of the family office have also shown that they are ready to wait for the dust to settle on the tariff of President Donald Trump before the new deals. In the first six months of 2025, family offices made 375 direct investments in companies, 32% year-to-year decline, especially according to data given to CNBC by FintRX. According to a private wealth intelligence platform, Fintrex, investment in every field including technology and health care and life sciences in two most popular deal categories in 2024 and 2025 fell. According to PWC’s Jonathan Flack, only Artificial Intelligence companies saw an increase in direct investments, which increased from 55 to 71. However, family office talks about betting on AI, which comes to betting on AI, which according to PWC’s Jonathan Flack, which leads the consultation giant US and Global Family Office Practice. Family offices, especially those who are less comfortable with technology investment, are taking a pics and shovel approach by investing in the infrastructure around AI. “They are actually investing in data centers and required difficult assets required for the development of AI and AI,” Flack said. Between the demands on the health care system and the rise of AI-Saksham Biotech Startups, the health care investment is somewhat flexible, he said. For example, he said, there are considerable potential in view of the expected cuts in medical diagnostics startups as Trump’s tax-and-cost law is expected to pressurize rural health care. Broadly, the family offices are agile about their enterprise capital investment, according to a lawyer, who advise family offices, money and institutional investors, according to Vicky Odate. He said that the recession of exit means that he has less capital. Odate, a fellow of Hens Boon, said, “I am just watching a lot of investigation.” “They are actually looking for deals where they can actually see, in the near period, much more of a profitable path.” He said, his customers are not sitting on the shore. He said that opportunistic family offices are showing interest in secondary funds, which have increased popularity because institutional investors want liquidity, he said. Whether or not the deal-making rebound will be done by the end of the year, this is another question of patience. Flack said he hoped that it would not be good to deal, but to grow slightly in the second half of 2025. “I still see where is one external percentage of uncontrolled capital in family offices,” he said. “I think as you move towards the end of this year, they want to go into some deals.” Odate said that family offices would require more clarity on tariffs to invest in American firms so that it can be raised meaningfully. However, she has recently seen a change in family offices, even domestic people are looking abroad, and she hopes that it will be final. “Most deals we are seeing is actually centered in Europe and abroad,” he said. “We are seeing that a lot of family offices construct more cross-border syndicates, where they are all talking to each other to find new sources of alpha that are outside America”
