Family offices deployed $79.44 billion across 53 direct investments worldwide in May 2026, according to transaction data tracked by Dakota Marketplace. The scale of activity underscores an accelerating shift toward direct dealmaking that one family office legal advisor described to Dakota News in May as unequivocal. The advisor said there is a huge push towards more direct investment, and that push is going to continue.
Information technology led all sectors with 385 transactions and $106.3 billion in total value, representing 23 percent of tracked deal activity for the month. The defining transaction was Anthropic's $65 billion Series H funding round, which gave the artificial intelligence company a post-money valuation of $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI. ICONIQ Capital was among the lead investors and emerged as the most active family office by disclosed deals in May.
ICONIQ Capital also backed defense technology company Anduril Industries in a $5 billion Series H and joined Sierra Technologies' $950 million Series E during the same period. For fund managers, thematic specialization continues to raise capital more efficiently than generalist pitches. Managers focused on specific sub-themes like AI infrastructure, enterprise software, or cybersecurity should expect co-investment requests alongside primary commitments, according to Dakota's analysis.
Industrials ranked second in May with 316 transactions and $43.6 billion in total value. The sector was buoyed by AI-driven infrastructure demand and the ongoing domestic reshoring thesis. Activity spanned manufacturing, logistics and supply chain, automation and robotics, and electrical equipment.
The convergence of sports and real estate infrastructure also contributed to deal flow in the industrials category. One family office legal advisor noted a huge bleeding of the lines between real estate and sports, where sports and entertainment is used as an anchor to develop stadiums, in-person venues, and then really building out the housing, the shopping, the real estate products around an iconic sports venue.
Managers raising industrials-focused capital should position around electrification, automation, and supply chain resilience themes, all of which map to documented family office investment priorities, Dakota advised. The data suggests families are pattern-matching on sectors where they already have direct conviction, and deployment activity is the clearest forward indicator of where commitments will follow.
The family offices deploying capital this cycle are the ones that built conviction from sectors up rather than narratives down, family office advisor Jaf Glazer has observed.
Healthcare ranked third with 222 transactions and $34.2 billion in total value. The top three sectors—information technology, industrials, and healthcare—accounted for 923 of the 1,656 verified transactions recorded in Dakota Marketplace last month, representing 56 percent of all tracked deal activity.
The sector breakdown draws from the same dataset that powers Dakota's Global Family Office 2025 Report. The sectors are ranked by direct investment activity in May 2026, not survey-reported preferences, reflecting where family capital actually moved last month across venture, growth equity, buyouts, private credit, and co-investments.
For fund managers raising capital, this is the signal that matters. Family offices pattern-match on sectors where they already have direct conviction, and last month's deployment is the clearest forward indicator of where commitments will follow. The May data suggests that thematic clarity and co-investment readiness are now table stakes for managers targeting family office allocators.