Family Offices Pass on AI Megarounds as $100 Million-Plus Deals Take 87.5% of U.S. Venture Dollars, Betting Smaller Early Checks Will Compound for Generations

Venture capital in 2026 has become a game of giant checks. Rounds of $100 million or more accounted for 87.5% of all U.S. venture dollars deployed in the first half of the year, according to PitchBook data cited by CNBC, as investors raced to fund the enormous compute and talent bills of artificial intelligence companies. But a group of family offices is deliberately walking the other way, writing smaller checks into younger companies on the theory that the real multiples are no longer at the top of the market.

The shift, reported by CNBC on Nov. 14, is a useful window into how private wealth thinks differently from institutional money, and why that difference matters for founders, fund managers and anyone building a long-term portfolio.

Why Some Wealthy Families Are Skipping the Mega-Rounds

The core argument is about price. Jason Blanck, who launched his namesake family office in 2024, told CNBC that the idea that large late-stage checks “de-risk” an investment is a misconception, because buyers in those rounds are paying close to peak multiples for companies whose growth is already slowing. In his view, that leaves little room for upside.

Blanck runs what he describes as a barbell. A core base of public equities sits on one side; on the other, a minority slice goes to venture assets such as direct early-stage stakes and secondaries. He holds a position in Anthropic, one of the most sought-after AI names, yet told CNBC it is not the holding that moves the needle for his portfolio. He pointed instead to Longshot Space Technology, a company building a launcher it calls a “space gun” to fire payloads into orbit. Blanck Capital has backed it since a pre-seed round in 2023, and the company has since won contracts with the U.S. Air Force, DARPA and the U.S. Navy, according to the report.

Multiples Over Speed: The Generational Math

For Shea Ventures, the investment arm of the Shea family, whose construction business helped build the Golden Gate Bridge and the Hoover Dam, the logic is about time horizon. The family has invested in venture capital since the late 1960s. Managing director John Morrissey told CNBC the goal is to sustain and grow the family’s wealth tax-efficiently across generations, and that one holding compounding at double-digit rates for years usually beats a quick, high-return exit that hands cash back and forces the office to find its next deal.

That preference shapes which funds Shea backs. Morrissey said he looks for managers whose limited partners, like his family, care more about the total multiple on invested capital than about internal rate of return, the metric that rewards getting money back fast. Large institutions and sovereign wealth funds, he noted, often want capital returned sooner, face different tax considerations and can afford far bigger allocations to a single round than most families.

He was blunt about scale. Outside a handful of very large family offices, Morrissey said, most have perhaps a couple of billion dollars and may still have an operating business to support, so they will never compete with an endowment like Yale’s on check size. Early-stage investing lets them play where size is less of an advantage.

Where the Cheap Valuations Are Hiding

Shea invests both directly and through funds such as Shakti, a five-year-old fund that backs companies at inception, sometimes before they have a product or revenue. Shakti founder Keval Desai told CNBC that “healthy, meaning low” valuations are still available for investors willing to be unconventional and stay out of the herd. The fund does invest around AI, but it looks for less crowded niches; its portfolio includes two robotics companies focused on collecting garbage, one of them in space.

Both Shea and Blanck also hold growth equity to balance the risk of very young companies, a reminder that this is a tilt in allocation rather than an all-in bet on seed rounds.

The Bigger Picture for Private Wealth

The startup story fits a broader trend in how the very rich are reshaping portfolios. Alternative investments now make up 60% of single-family office portfolios, overtaking traditional assets for the first time, according to BNY Wealth data reported by CNBC on Nov. 12. A Citi survey of 351 family offices cited in the same report found inflation was their top concern, followed by interest rates, financial system stability and market volatility. Notably, Citi’s survey also showed public equities had the strongest net increase in allocations, which suggests families are layering alternatives on top of markets rather than abandoning them.

Put together, the picture is of wealthy families seeking returns that do not simply track a concentrated, AI-heavy stock market, and of some of them concluding that the crowded top of venture capital offers less diversification than it appears to.

What It Means for Business Readers

• For founders: When megadeals take nearly nine of every ten venture dollars, the early-stage market can feel starved. Patient family capital is a real alternative, and it often comes with longer holding periods and less pressure for a fast exit.
• For investors and wealth builders: The distinction between multiple and IRR matters. A strategy optimized for long compounding may look slower on paper but can build more wealth over decades, especially after taxes.
• For fund managers: Families with long horizons are explicitly screening for managers whose other limited partners share their patience. Alignment of the investor base is becoming a selling point.
• The risk: Early-stage companies fail often, and pre-revenue bets can take a decade to pay off, if they ever do. The offices profiled pair these stakes with public equities and growth equity for exactly that reason.

The Bottom Line

The AI boom has pushed venture capital toward fewer, larger and pricier deals. A subset of family offices is betting that the better long-term returns sit further down the funding ladder, in small checks, unconventional niches and companies that can compound for years. Whether that contrarian stance pays off will depend on picking winners early, but it is a clear signal that, for generational wealth, the most popular deal is not always the best one.

Sources: CNBC, “Family offices see more upside in smaller startup bets” (Nov. 14, 2026); CNBC, “The world’s super-rich are piling into alternative investments” (Nov. 12, 2026).

Edited by Coron @QUE.COM
Website: https://QUE.COM Intelligence
Sponsored by: https://MAJ.COM AI Autonomous