Family offices are emerging as increasingly influential players in large investment deals. Once obscure investment platforms, today family offices are openly writing large checks alongside other investor heavyweights such as large private equity firms, hedge funds, and other investment managers. They are participating in prominent mergers & acquisitions, startup funding rounds, and other capital raises for companies.

Family offices are privately held investment vehicles or holding companies that manage the wealth of ultrarich families. They typically invest the money of a single family or individual. Family offices may also provide legal, tax, and estate planning services. Some family offices even employ lifestyle managers or concierge offices that handle personal tasks such as booking restaurants reservations, planning travel itineraries, and managing private jets.

Some of the most active family offices for dealmaking include Eric Schmidt’s Hillspire, Barry Sternlicht’s Jaws Estate Capital, and Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office. Other major players include Bezos Expeditions and Emerson Collective, the family office of Laurene Powell Jobs, wife of the late Steve Jobs.

Investment firms that manage family capital globally are expected to grow rapidly in the coming years. There are currently more than 8,000 single-family offices around the world, a number that is expected to grow to more than 10,000 by 2030. Family offices currently manage approximately $5.5 trillion in wealth, a 67% jump from five years ago. Wall Street and Silicon Valley companies and asset managers have been courting family offices, viewing them as a stable source of capital.

Given the diverse asset classes that compose some family office portfolios, employees with unique job titles may be on the payroll. For example, many family offices with at least $500 million in assets under management employ art advisers.

“It’s not just growing, it’s exploding. I really think about the family office world being the next private equity,” stated Hendrik Jordan, a partner at the law firm Nelson Mullins.

Many companies looking to raise capital are aggressively pitching deals to family offices, rather than just focusing on traditional institutional investors. Professionals at family offices regularly talk to one another to stay informed about attractive deal opportunities offered to peer firms.

Eric Schmidt’s family office Hillspire participated in 15 deals in 2025. The family office has heavily focused its investment activity on high-growth companies in the artificial intelligence sector. Some recent investments by Hillspire include investments in Anthropic, Reflection AI, and Gradium, a startup creating audio language AI models.

Family offices are able to keep their investment activities and total investment returns relatively opaque because they are not subject to many of the public disclosure obligations facing other investment firms. Based on voluntary disclosures, many family offices have recently been focused on AI investments like much of the broader market.

Co-investing with private equity firms has become a popular investment strategy among family offices. This enables family offices to participate in deals alongside private equity funds without paying them management fees. The private equity fund will often take the lead on sourcing the investment opportunity and performing due diligence on the target company. In return for agreeing to invest a large amount of capital, many co-investment arrangements give family offices the right to buy additional shares in the target company at a later date.