Family Offices Stayed Active in July as Clean Energy Led the Month

July Deal Count Held Steady While Markets Wobbled

Family offices are private teams that manage money and investments for wealthy families. They can afford to think in decades, so their monthly deal activity is a good look at where patient money is heading.

During July, those offices completed 57 direct deals in companies, according to Fintrx, which shared the data with CNBC on August 6, 2026. That matched June's total and held up even as a steep market selloff and rising energy prices made the month feel messy.

A direct investment means the family office buys into a specific company instead of handing money to a fund.

Clean energy and sustainability companies pulled in more than 15% of July's investments.

AI startups still collected the largest share of deals. Bezos Expeditions has been especially busy this year, making the most family-office investments so far in 2026 and putting money into five AI startups in June alone.

A Rocket Deal and a Battery Bet Led the Month

July's most prominent deal was in space. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' rocket company, raised $10 billion.

$2 billion of that total came from Bezos Expeditions, his family office.

Antora Energy, a company building thermal batteries, raised $550 million in a Series C round, a later-stage funding round, with John Doerr among the investors.

Doerr's private venture firm, Foris Ventures, has also invested in Panthalassa, Pacific Fusion, and Rondo Energy. John Arnold went in a different direction, backing Hephae Energy Technology through a $17.8 million early-stage round, called a Series A, that closed in July.

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Hephae focuses on next-generation geothermal drilling. Arnold told CNBC in February that he likes advanced geothermal because it can unlock more of that resource and provide steady, always-on power, known as baseload power, at a price that looks close to market.

Clean Energy Is Back in Favor

This corner of investing had gone cold. A few years ago, backlash to ESG, which stands for environmental, social and governance investing, plus the Trump administration's rollback of climate policies, pushed a lot of money away.

Then the math changed. AI's electricity demand exploded, and the Iran war disrupted energy supplies, making clean energy look practical again.

Family offices mostly stuck with renewables and sustainability even while conventional investors walked away. That patience is starting to show up in the overall numbers.

Morningstar found that U.S. sustainability funds attracted $3 billion during Q2 2026.

That ended a stretch of 14 consecutive quarters in which more money left than entered those funds.

Walmart heir Lukas Walton's family office, Builders Vision, is built around environmental and sustainability investing and philanthropy. In July, it joined Lydian's $43 million Series A round.

Grok Ventures, the investment firm of Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes, was in that round too. Lydian makes synthetic aviation fuel.

Doerr said in April that "roaring demand for electricity, shifting geopolitics, and disruptive market forces" are reshaping the world. He has argued that "only clean energy can meet the surging demand for affordable, durable, and sustainable energy."

A September Citi Private Bank survey of 346 family offices found that more than half said they would likely make sustainable investments over the next five years. A November Bank of America survey found most family-office leaders predicted heirs would keep or increase money in sustainable or impact investments.

What This Means for Your Money

Family offices are not a perfect guide. They can make mistakes, and they manage money on a much longer clock than most people do.

Their July ledgers and the surveys around them point in the same direction. Patient money still sees clean energy as a growth story, not a charity case.

For your portfolio, that helps explain the $3 billion that flowed into sustainability funds in one quarter.

A shift that big does not guarantee future returns. It does show what some of the longest-lived portfolios in the world are betting on.

When money that plans to stay invested for generations starts moving, it tends to leave a trail. That is the story July's deal ledgers told.

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