Family Offices Continue with Big AI Bets, Led by Record OpenAI Round
Family office direct investment activity held steady in March, with 49 deals recorded globally, up slightly from 47 in February, according to Dakota Marketplace data.
The aggregate disclosed value of the transactions in which they participated rose significantly to $126.65B from $34.7B in the previous month, though that leap in deal value was almost entirely driven by OpenAI's recent funding round. At the end of March, the ChatGPT maker closed a record $122B funding round at a post-money valuation of $852B.
The massive funding round drew support from a host of strategic and financial investors, including billionaire hedge fund manager David Tepper's family office, Appaloosa. In February, Appaloosa also made an investment in Anthropic as part of the Claude maker's $30B Series G round.
The technology sector again led deal activity during March, with family offices participating in large funding rounds for AI and robotic intelligence-related companies. Bezos Expeditions, which manages the wealth of Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos, co-led a $1.03B seed round in Advanced Machine Intelligence, or AMI. The company, co-founded by AI pioneer and former Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, is focusing on building new AI systems that are controllable and have the ability to reason and understand. LeCun is the executive chairman of AMI, while Nabla co-founder and former Facebook engineer Alex LeBrun serves as CEO.
AMI's round included participation from leading family offices, including Hillspire, the firm of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, as well as Aglaé Ventures of the Arnault family, Artémis of the Pinault family, and Association Familiale Mulliez.
Healthcare recorded nine deals during the month, with industrials following at six, marking a shift from February when industrials ranked higher than healthcare. Dubai-based KAAF Investments joined the largest family-office-backed healthcare deal during March – a $116M round for French health insurance startup Alan. 2018 FIFA World Cup winner Antoine Griezmann was also among the investors in the round. McPike Global Family Office made an investment in Netherlands-based Vitestro as part of the latter's $70M oversubscribed Series B financing. Vitestro is a medical robotics company focused on autonomous blood drawing technology.
Notable March Deals
ICONIQ Capital, which manages the wealth of a host of Silicon Valley billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and Dustin Moskovitz, participated in five funding rounds during the month, including three of the top ten deals. The largest was a $550M Series D funding round for Legora, an AI platform for lawyers, which valued the company at $5.55B.
Another notable round during March was Rhoda AI's $450M Series A, which included participation from Premji Invest and Capricorn Investment Group. The company emerged from stealth to develop robotic intelligence.
For family offices, the shift toward direct investments is picking up pace, according to Bloomberg. At a breakfast meeting during Bloomberg Invest's recent New York conference, executives and advisors to single-family offices said they were increasing allocations to direct deals, driven both by market fundamentals and by a broader shift in psychology around fees and control. "I think there’s a philosophical view, that when you hear fund, most families think fees and lockup," Albert Luk, director of private investments at Brodie Generational Capital Partners, said during the gathering. While traditional private equity funds still have a role, their importance is diminishing. David Sachse, managing partner of the Sachse Family Fund, noted that his firm has shifted from allocating roughly 2:1 in favor of direct deals over funds to a much heavier 5:1 tilt toward direct investing.
Family Office Spotlight
Capricorn Investment Group is a Palo Alto, CA-based investment firm focused on sustainable investments. It was founded in 2000 to manage the investments of Jeffrey Skoll, the first full-time employee and first president of online marketplace eBay. He also founded the Skoll Foundation in 1999 to manage his philanthropy efforts.
Capricorn now serves both Skoll and a host of high net-worth individuals, families, charitable foundations, and other institutional investors, operating as a full-service OCIO and multi-client asset manager. Capricorn manages around $12B in multi-asset class portfolios for families, foundations and institutional investors.
Other than Rhoda AI, in March the firm also backed the $200M Series A of AI networking firm Eridu as one of the lead investors. This follows Capricorn's participation in the $140M Series B round for energy infrastructure company Heron Power in February.
Key Research & Decision-Making Contacts
- Partner and managing director Dipender Saluja has served Capricorn since 2007. He is a co-managing partner of Capricorn's Technology Impact Fund. Prior to joining the firm, Saluja served as chief of staff at electronic design company Cadence. He sits on several boards, including that of Eridu and fusion power company Helion.
- Partner Ion Yadigaroglu has been with the firm since 2004. He is co-managing partner of Capricorn's Technology Impact Fund and serves on the investment committee for all of the firm's strategies. Before joining the firm, he was a director of business development with Koch Industries.
- Partner Robert Schultz, who is a member of the client solutions team, joined Capricorn in 2020. Previously, he was the co-founder and COO of Greentech Capital Advisors, an investment banking firm focused on sustainable technology and infrastructure that was sold to Nomura in April 2020.
- Partner and CFO Eric Techel leads global finance and investment operations for separately managed investor accounts, multi-fund structures and private equity funds. He has been with the firm for nearly 19 years. Techel is also a part of the investment committee for Capricorn's Sustainable Investors Fund.
- Partner and advisor Nick Flores joined Capricorn in 2025 from multi-family office Caprock, where he served as a managing director co-leading impact and sustainable investment business. Prior to that, he designed investment strategies for impact-oriented clients at advisory firm Emcor Securities.
- Partner Mark Berryman served three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa at the start of his career. He is currently a member of the firm's investment team and also serves as an adjunct professor of impact investing at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. Berryman also joined the firm from Caprock.
Dakota Family Office Deal Tracker is a monthly publication covering direct investment activity by family offices globally, sourced from Dakota Marketplace data. Have a question or want to share a tip? Reach out to Editor Tayyeba Irum at tirum@dakota.com.
