Family office direct investment is not slowing down. "Unequivocally, there's a huge push towards more direct investment, and that is going to continue," one family office legal advisor told Dakota News in May.
Dakota Marketplace tracked 53 family office direct investments worldwide in May 2026, totaling $79.44B in disclosed transaction value. The top three sectors (Information Technology, Industrials, and Health Care) accounted for 923 of the 1,656 verified transactions recorded in Dakota Marketplace last month, representing 56% of all tracked deal activity. The sector breakdown below draws from the same dataset that powers Dakota's Global Family Office 2025 Report.
The sectors below are ranked by direct investment activity in May 2026, not survey-reported preferences. This reflects where family capital actually moved last month across venture, growth equity, buyouts, private credit, and co-investments. For fund managers raising capital, this is the signal that matters: family offices pattern-match on sectors where they already have direct conviction, and last month's deployment is the clearest forward indicator of where commitments will follow.
Top 10 Sectors by Family Office Direct Investment Activity
1. Information Technology
385 transactions | $106.3B total value
Technology led all sectors in May by a wide margin, accounting for 23% of tracked deal activity. The month's defining transaction was Anthropic's $65B Series H funding round, which gave the AI company a post-money valuation of $965B, surpassing OpenAI. ICONIQ Capital was among the lead investors and was the most active family office by disclosed deals in May, also backing defense technology company Anduril Industries in a $5B Series H and joining Sierra Technologies' $950M Series E. For fund managers, thematic specialization continues to raise more efficiently than generalist pitches: managers focused on specific sub-themes like AI infrastructure, enterprise software, or cybersecurity should expect co-investment requests alongside primary commitments.
2. Industrials
316 transactions | $43.6B total value
Industrials ranked second in May, buoyed by AI-driven infrastructure demand and the ongoing domestic reshoring thesis. Activity spans manufacturing, logistics and supply chain, automation and robotics, and electrical equipment. The convergence of sports and real estate infrastructure also contributed to deal flow here: one family office legal advisor noted a "huge bleeding of the lines between real estate and sports, where sports and entertainment is used as an anchor to develop stadiums, in-person venues, and then really building out the housing, the shopping, the real estate products around an iconic sports venue." Managers raising industrials-focused capital should position around electrification, automation, and supply chain resilience themes, all of which map to documented family office investment priorities.
3. Health Care
222 transactions | $34.2B total value
Health Care ranked third in May by deal count. Family offices continue to reframe health care from reactive treatment to longevity, biotech, and health technology. The Pritzker Organization's $145M growth equity investment in Vi Labs was among the notable deals, reflecting continued interest in health and wellness platforms. Activity spans biotech, medical devices, digital health, and health services. Family offices pursue health care for both financial and mission alignment, which creates longer hold horizons. Managers with therapeutic area specialization or platform biotech strategies tend to resonate most.
4. Real Estate
154 transactions | $16.2B total value
Real Estate ranked fourth by deal count in May, with Dubai Holding's $6.5B acquisition of a 22.27% stake in Emaar Properties (the developer behind the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai Mall) as the second-largest transaction of the month. Family offices strongly prefer direct exposure over fund vehicles in this sector. Many want to see a direct deal pipeline alongside any fund commitment, not instead of it. Managers raising real estate capital should come prepared to discuss co-investment opportunities as part of the pitch, with industrial and logistics, residential multifamily, data centers, and specialty property types drawing the most consistent interest.
5. Consumer Discretionary
141 transactions | $28.6B total value
Consumer Discretionary ranked fifth in May, with sports assets driving a meaningful share of activity. Michael Dell and a group led by Silver Lake's Egon Durban acquired a 25.3% stake in the NFL's Las Vegas Raiders at a $9.9B franchise valuation. Bolt Ventures, the family office of David Blitzer, led a seven-figure investment in women's sports media company Just Women's Sports. Families with operating business backgrounds in consumer goods disproportionately deploy here, pattern-matching against the playbooks that built their original wealth. Consumer funds with operating partner benches, brand-building expertise, or specific channel specialization tend to raise most efficiently from family capital.
Dakota Marketplace tracks direct investment activity from family offices across every sector in this list, with deal-level detail on stage, round size, co-investors, and portfolio companies. If you're raising capital and want to know which family offices are already investing in your sector, see it here.
6. Financials
116 transactions | $16.6B total value
Financials ranked sixth by deal count in May but carries significant dollar weight relative to transaction count, reflecting larger deal sizes across specialty finance, insurance, asset management, fintech infrastructure, and bank holding companies. The pullback of traditional bank lending continues to create opportunity in specialty credit platforms. Private credit strategies with specialty angles (asset-based lending, middle-market direct lending, and litigation finance) are actively gathering family office commitments. Alpha Square Group's $160M venture investment in Corgi Insurance was among the notable Financials deals in May.
7. Communication Services
69 transactions | $10.3B total value
Communication Services ranked seventh by count but carries outsized dollar value, indicating a smaller number of larger transactions. May saw two significant media deals: Allen Family Digital, an affiliate of Byron Allen's family office, acquired a majority stake in BuzzFeed for $120M, and Lupa Systems, the media and technology holding company of James Murdoch, agreed to acquire New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and Vox from Vox Media in a deal valued at more than $300M. Capital in this sector often follows specific thematic conviction (sports, streaming, creator platforms, media ownership) rather than sector-wide mandates. Specialization wins commitments here.
8. Consumer Staples
63 transactions | $6.1B total value
Consumer Staples is a smaller sector by count but one where family offices have historically been patient, long-duration capital. Activity concentrates in food and beverage platforms, household and personal care brands, and agriculture. The sector attracts family capital because of its cycle resilience and the prevalence of family-controlled companies available for minority stakes or generational transition deals. Managers raising capital for staples-focused strategies should emphasize pricing power through inflation cycles and multi-generational alignment with founder-led businesses.
9. Materials
49 transactions | $10.3B total value
Materials activity in May spans specialty chemicals, packaging, metals and mining, and building products. Family office interest ties closely to electrification and energy transition supply chains (battery materials, rare earths, and copper) and industrial input demand from reshored manufacturing. Thiel Capital and Foris Ventures' $140M Series B investment in Panthalassa, a Portland-based renewable energy and ocean technology company developing floating systems that generate power from ocean waves to run AI computing infrastructure at sea, illustrates the convergence of materials and energy transition themes drawing family capital. Fund managers should position around energy transition supply chains and input security for domestic manufacturing.
10. Energy
33 transactions | $12.2B total value
Energy rounds out the top 10 with the fewest transactions but one of the highest average deal values in the ranking, reflecting project finance structures and large-scale asset transactions. Activity concentrates in renewable power generation, grid infrastructure, and energy storage. Builders Vision, the investment and philanthropy platform tied to the Walton family, backed CREW Carbon in an oversubscribed Series A comprising $19M in equity and $6M in grants and non-dilutive funding, and led a $14M round for ECOncrete, a bio-enhancing concrete company focused on marine biodiversity. Family offices deploy in Energy for yield, inflation hedging, and long-duration asset exposure. Infrastructure funds with renewable generation, grid modernization, or water positioning raise efficiently from family offices building out alternatives allocations.
From Sector Trends to Targeted Outreach With Dakota Marketplace
Sector-level patterns like the ones above only drive fundraising outcomes when you can act on them at the family-by-family level. Dakota Marketplace is built for that workflow, tracking direct investment activity across every sector covered in this post with deal-level visibility into stage, round, co-investors, and underlying portfolio companies. Every record reflects an actual deal that closed, not a response to a questionnaire about investment intentions.
What family offices do with their capital is more reliable than what they say about their capital. Dakota tracks the former.
Two patterns from the data consistently shape how fund managers work the database:
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Direct investment history is the best predictor of future fund commitment. A family office with 15 direct deals in industrial technology is a priority prospect for an industrial growth equity fund, even without prior fund commitments on record. Dakota's transaction data surfaces these families before competitors identify them.
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Thematic specialization wins over broad sector coverage. Family offices cluster direct investment in specific sub-themes: AI infrastructure within tech, biotech platforms within health care, electrification within materials. Sub-sector and co-investor filters match your fund's mandate to families with documented conviction in the same theme.
Filter by sector and sub-sector investment history, stage (venture, growth, buyout, credit) and deal size, geographic concentration, or co-investor overlap to build a targeted prospect list.
The family offices investing directly in your sector today are the fund commitments you should be sourcing for next quarter. Book a demo of Dakota Marketplace and start finding them.
