Family office deal-making rebounds in April with healthcare bets

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 stepped up their deal-making in April after a slowdown the month prior triggered by the outbreak of the Iran war.

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.

Nearly a third of April’s investments were made in healthcare and life sciences companies.

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.

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 co-founder died in 2011 from complications of pancreatic cancer.

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.

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%.

This influx of private capital comes during cuts and interruptions to federal funding for healthcare research. A budget proposal released by the Trump administration in April seeks to cut an additional $5 billion from the National Institutes of Health.