Family Offices Shift Focus to Public Equities Amid AI Rally

In the second quarter, single‑family offices raised their equity stake to 37% of total assets, up from 34% in the first quarter, marking the largest quarterly swing toward stocks in several years. The move comes as the S&P 500 posted a roughly 15% gain during the period, fueling a broader market rally.

Concurrently, allocations to private markets and real estate fell by about three percentage points, while cash positions dipped by less than one point, indicating a push to deploy more capital in public markets.

Addepar’s real‑time portfolio tracker, which aggregates data from over 1.4 trillion dollars of family‑office assets, shows that the shift is largely driven by market performance rather than active rebalancing. The AI‑driven thematic trade appears to be a key catalyst, with many family offices favoring publicly traded AI‑heavy names.

Microsoft remains the most popular holding, owned by 77% of family offices, followed closely by Amazon and Alphabet at 76%, Apple at 70%, and Nvidia at 69%.

Private‑market exposure dropped to 46% from 49% in Q2, the steepest decline in recent years, largely due to markdowns in private credit funds, particularly those launched in 2020 or later. This shift underscores a growing preference for liquid, public equities among the wealthiest investors, even as they maintain significant stakes in technology leaders.