Family offices boost startup investments in October, backing women's health and caregivers

A version of this article appeared in CNBC's Inside Wealth newsletter, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. After a slow September, investment firms of ultra-wealthy families stepped up their deal-making last month. In October, family offices made 56 direct investments in companies, up about 30% from the month prior, according to data provided exclusively to CNBC by Fintrx, a private wealth intelligence platform. Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective was the most prolific investor of the month, backing three healthcare startups according to Fintrx data. Her investment and philanthropy firm seeks to address health equity and other complex challenges like the energy transition. Last month, Emerson Collective joined a $555 million Series G for Devoted Health, a healthcare provider and insurer of Medicare Advantage plans, alongside information technology billionaire Azim Premji's namesake family office. Devoted Health, which has counted Emerson Collective as an investor since 2021, announced that it will use the fundraise to expand to five additional states for a total of 34. Powell Jobs' firm also participated in two fundraises for healthcare data startups BioStack and Collective X Health. BioStack, which raised $9.5 million in seed funding, analyzes patient records across different institutions to create training datasets for artificial intelligence healthcare models. Collective X Health, fresh off a $3.2 million pre-seed round, seeks to close the gender data gap by compiling and licensing peer-reviewed, female-specific data and research. Emerson Collective is in good company as family offices continue to invest in healthcare innovations from telehealth to drug discovery. In a family office survey released by Citi Wealth in September, healthcare ranked as the second-most-popular sector for direct investing at 32%, only behind AI at 51%. Melinda French Gates' Pivotal Ventures joined an $82 million Series C for Abby Care, an AI-enabled startup that trains and certifies family members as paid caregivers under Medicaid and Medicare programs. Erin Harkless Moore, who manages investments at Pivotal Ventures, told CNBC that the firm looks for founders who have first-hand experience with the complexities of healthcare. Abby Care CEO and founder Havi Nguyen started navigating the Medicaid system at age 9 as a caregiver for her sisters and eventually 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." For family offices looking to invest in healthcare, Moore said overlooked markets offer a chance to back companies addressing needs that have long gone unmet. "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."