Billionaire family offices back health care and biotech startups in August
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC's Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer.
Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. Investment firms of ultra-wealthy families are helping fuel the venture capital rebound in biotechnology.
In August, family offices made 52 direct investments in private companies, with biotech startups representing about 20% of transactions, according to data provided exclusively to CNBC by Fintrx, a private wealth intelligence platform.
Stanley Druckenmiller's Duquesne Family Office, one of the most active family offices in the U.S., has backed at least four pharmaceuticals or life sciences companies this year, according to Fintrx. Last month, Duquesne participated in a $90 million Series C round for Epicrispr Biotechnologies.
The eight-year-old startup is pioneering a new gene therapy for a rare muscle disorder known as facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, or FSHD. Druckenmiller said in January that Duquesne had made substantial investments in biotech due to the potential of artificial intelligence.
"I knew because I've been on the board of Memorial Sloan Kettering for 30 years, that probably the best use case out there of AI is biotech through drug discovery, diagnostics, monitoring everything," he said in an interview conducted by Morgan Stanley.
In August, the namesake family office of Jeff Bezos also joined a $188 million Series E for LifeMine Therapeutics, which uses AI to analyze fungal genomes to develop new drugs. LifeMine is currently testing a drug compound to prevent organ failure in transplant recipients. Bill Gates' venture capital firm, Gates Frontier, also participated in the megaround.
Get Inside Wealth directly to your inbox The Inside Wealth newsletter by Robert Frank is your weekly guide to high-net-worth investors and the industries that serve them. Subscribe here to get access today. Venture funding for biotechnology has rebounded strongly this year.
U.S. and European biopharma startups raised a whopping $12.6 billion in the first half of 2026, a five-year high, according to analysis by Silicon Valley Bank, now a division of First Citizens Bank after its 2023 collapse and subsequent sale.
That said, investors are writing fewer checks overall, especially for early-stage startups, with a greater share of funding going toward companies with drugs already in testing, according to SVB's analysis, citing its own data and data from PitchBook.