Family offices stepped up healthcare deals in October

Deal pace picked up

October was a rebound month for the ultra-wealthy's investing arms. Family offices logged 56 direct company investments, roughly a 30% jump from September, based on figures from Fintrx, a private wealth intelligence platform, provided exclusively to CNBC. Healthcare remained a magnet for capital across areas like telehealth and drug discovery.

Emerson Collective leads the charge

Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective was the most active, with three healthcare deals and a mandate that includes health equity alongside big issues like the energy transition. It joined Devoted Health's $555 million Series G, backing the Medicare Advantage insurer and healthcare provider together with the namesake family office of information-technology billionaire Azim Premji. Emerson Collective has invested in Devoted Health since 2021, and the company said the new funding will support expansion into five more states, bringing its footprint to 34.

Data plays and caregiving attract capital

Emerson Collective also participated in two health data rounds. BioStack raised $9.5 million in seed financing to analyze records across multiple institutions and build training datasets for artificial intelligence models in healthcare. Collective X Health closed a $3.2 million pre-seed to assemble and license peer-reviewed, female-specific data and research to help narrow the gender data gap.

Activity was broad beyond Emerson. Melinda French Gates' Pivotal Ventures took part in an $82 million Series C backing Abby Care, an AI-enabled company that prepares and credentials relatives to be compensated caregivers within Medicaid and Medicare. Erin Harkless Moore, the investment lead at Pivotal Ventures, said the team prioritizes founders with lived experience in the system.

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Abby Care's CEO and founder, Havi Nguyen, began working with Medicaid when she was 9, caring for her sisters and, later, her grandparents. "We look for teams that understand the problem deeply and have a model built for the realities of the healthcare system as it currently exists. Abby Care is a great example," Moore said.

"Their deep understanding of the market allowed them to both spot an unsolved problem and understand how to navigate the regulatory challenges in this space."

In Citi Wealth's September survey of family offices, healthcare ranked as the second-most popular sector for direct investments at 32%, trailing only AI at 51%. Moore added that undercovered areas still hold promise: "Women's health is a space that has been historically underfunded and under-researched. We have less data, less funding, and huge gaps to fill," she said. "That can make investing more challenging, but it can also point to where there's real opportunity."

The investor takeaway

Healthcare remains a priority for family offices, with fresh money flowing to infrastructure-like data platforms and care models built for today's rules. AI may be the headline sector, but the checks are increasingly landing where the operating know-how - and overlooked demand - meet. For portfolios, that points to durable themes in Medicare-driven care delivery, female-focused data assets, and tools that turn messy health records into usable AI training fuel.

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