Family office investment activity picked up again in April, with healthcare and life sciences emerging as key areas of focus after a quieter March caused by uncertainty surrounding the Iran conflict.
According to data from private wealth intelligence platform Fintrx, family offices completed 55 direct investments last month, compared with 39 in March. A significant share of those deals targeted healthcare and biotech startups.
Laurene Powell Jobs’ investment and philanthropic organisation, Emerson Collective, participated in funding rounds for two healthcare startups. These included Ultralight, an AI-powered personalised healthcare platform that secured $9.3 million in seed funding, and Stipple Bio, a cancer therapy developer that raised $100 million in a Series A round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Many family office healthcare investments are closely tied to personal experiences. Emerson Collective’s backing of Stipple Bio came through Yosemite, an oncology-focused venture fund established by Reed Jobs. His father, Steve Jobs, died in 2011 following complications linked to pancreatic cancer.
Elsewhere, Dolby Family Ventures joined a €53 million ($62 million) Series B funding round for Exciva, a company developing treatments for agitation in Alzheimer’s patients. The family office was founded by David Dolby after the death of his father, billionaire engineer Ray Dolby, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and acute leukemia.
A February survey by J.P. Morgan Private Bank found that healthcare innovation ranked as one of the leading investment themes among family offices, second only to artificial intelligence.
The growing flow of private investment into healthcare comes as US federal support for medical research faces pressure. A budget proposal from the National Institutes of Health released in April included plans to cut an additional $5 billion in funding.
