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. For investment firms of the ultra wealthy, deal-making held steady in August. Family offices made 47 direct investments in companies, nearly flat from July’s 48 , per data provided exclusively to CNBC by Fintrx. Tariff anxieties continue to weigh on family office deal-making, which sunk in August by nearly 50% on a year-over-year basis, according to the private wealth intelligence platform. That said, family offices of the world’s richest people came out swinging in August. The firms of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, hedge fund billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs joined an $863 million fundraise for Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Bill Gates’ venture capital firm, Gates Frontier, was also an investor in the nuclear fusion startup’s Series B2 round. While deal-making is on the decline, nuclear energy firms are attractive to family offices looking to tap into the artificial intelligence boom, which will require immense power. Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective was also part of a $314 million fundraise for robotics startup FieldAI . Jeff Bezos’ namesake family office co-led the round for the Irvine, California-based startup, which enables robots to learn and navigate physical environments like construction sites. In August, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel joined a $62 million fundraise for Stark, a German developer of weaponized drones. His family office, Thiel Capital, has backed Quantum Systems, another German drone manufacturer, since at least 2022. Thiel has a long track record of funding d …
