Family office deal-making stayed steady in August, with 47 direct company investments, just one fewer than July, according to data shared with CNBC by Fintrx. However, overall activity remains subdued, with deal counts nearly 50% lower than a year ago as tariff concerns weigh on private capital deployment.
Despite the slowdown, some of the world’s wealthiest investors backed bold, high-tech bets. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Stanley Druckenmiller, and Laurene Powell Jobs all joined an $863 million round for nuclear fusion company Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Bill Gates’ Gates Frontier also invested in the Series B2, signalling that nuclear energy is becoming a key play for family offices eager to meet the rising power demands of artificial intelligence.
Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective also invested in robotics startup FieldAI’s $314 million raise, which was co-led by Jeff Bezos’ family office. The company builds robots capable of learning and navigating real-world environments, such as construction sites.
Peter Thiel continued his push into defence tech, joining a $62 million funding round for Stark, a German maker of weaponised drones. His family office, Thiel Capital, has backed Quantum Systems—another German drone manufacturer—since 2022. Thiel’s history of supporting military-tech firms through Thiel Capital and Founders Fund includes backing Anduril and co-founding Palantir, which supplies AI tools to the U.S. government.
“AI is a military technology,” Thiel wrote in a 2019 New York Times op-ed, emphasising its real power lies in applications like computer vision and data analysis rather than science fiction scenarios.
Once out of favour due to ESG concerns, defence startups are now attracting fresh capital amid geopolitical tensions and rising EU defence budgets. In June, Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s VC firm led a €600 million round for Helsing, a Munich-based defence-tech company. The Porsche and Volkswagen family holding company also announced plans to create a dedicated fund for European defence startups and will host a “Defense Day” networking event for family offices later this year.
Venture capital funding for defence tech reached $19.1 billion in Q2 2025, more than tripling year over year, according to PitchBook.
