Laurene Powell Jobs, founder and president, Emerson Collective, speaks during the 29th annual Milken Institute Global Conference at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California on May 4, 2026. <\/p>\n
Patrick T. Fallon | Afp | Getty Images<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0Sign up<\/a>\u00a0to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n Investment firms of ultra-wealthy families stepped up their deal-making in April after a slowdown<\/a> the month prior triggered by the outbreak of the Iran war. <\/p>\n Family offices made 55 direct investments in companies last month, up from 39 in March according to data provided exclusively to CNBC by Fintrx, a private wealth intelligence platform.<\/p>\n Nearly a third of April’s investments were made in healthcare and life sciences companies. <\/p>\n Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective, her investment and philanthropy firm, joined fundraises for two startups, a seed round for Ultralight and a Series A round for Stipple Bio. Ultralight, an artificial intelligence software platform for personalized healthcare, raised $9.3 million in seed funding from Emerson Collective and other investors. Stipple Bio, a developer of targeted cancer therapies, raised $100 million in the round, which was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz.<\/p>\n Family offices’ healthcare investments are often inspired by personal experience. Emerson Collective’s investment in Stipple Bio was managed by Yosemite, an oncology-focused venture fund founded by Reed Jobs, Powell Jobs’ son with Steve Jobs. The Apple<\/a> co-founder died in 2011 from complications of pancreatic cancer.<\/p>\n Also in April, Dolby Family Ventures joined a 53 million euro ($62 million) Series B round for Exciva, a developer of treatments for agitation in Alzheimer’s patients. The impact-driven family office was founded by David Dolby in 2014, about a year after his father, billionaire engineer Ray Dolby, died of complications of Alzheimer’s disease and acute leukemia.<\/p>\n In a survey released by J.P. Morgan Private Bank in February, half of family offices cited healthcare innovation as a top investment theme, second only to artificial intelligence, at 65%.<\/p>\n This influx of private capital comes during cuts and interruptions to federal funding<\/a> for healthcare research. A budget proposa<\/a>l released by the Trump administration in April seeks to cut an additional $5 billion from the National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n