August Family Office Activity Rankings: a16z Tops, YZi Labs Founded by Binance's Zhao Changpeng Second with 10 Deals
According to data from FINTRX for August, global family offices participated in 109 deals, with disclosed financing totaling $16.9 billion, of which late-stage rounds accounted for 27%. By the number of deals, Andreessen Horowitz's joint family office a16z Perennial ranked first with 17 deals, while YZi Labs, founded by Binance's Zhao Changpeng, ranked second with 10 deals.
Perennial was established in 2022 to provide wealth management for Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and the entrepreneurs they support, managing approximately $2.74 billion in assets by the end of 2025. The disclosed scale of their participation in rounds totals about $10.45 billion, indicating that most appearances are in follow-on positions for large financings, rather than leading entire rounds.
YZi Labs manages over $10 billion in assets, covering Web3, artificial intelligence, and healthcare, with disclosed amounts in August totaling only $42.1 million. The statistics emphasize that the amounts are the total contributions from all investors in a round, not just from a single family office. Family office contributions are highly opaque, and individual real checks often cannot be reconstructed from public materials.
The rankings measure visible engagement frequency, not asset size. The Walton family’s Walton Enterprises, Gates’ Cascade, and Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions rank much higher in asset size than the two mentioned above, but did not make it to the active list for August based on public transaction counts. CNBC's earlier list of active large family offices in the U.S. ranked Hillspire and Bezos Expeditions at the top based on direct investments disclosed for 2025, which does not align with the monthly global deal count.
The 27% share of late-stage rounds indicates that family offices are writing small checks at the seed level while also having their names in billion-dollar rounds. Web3 and artificial intelligence are both mentioned in YZi's sector description, while Perennial is more aligned with the project flow of Silicon Valley venture capital.
In market mechanics, this is a credibility position rather than a pricing power auction: startups include family offices in press releases in exchange for the security of the next round of institutional investors. Beneficiaries are joint offices that can appear on 17 cap tables and projects needing endorsement from "non-fund LPs"; the pressured side is traditional single-family offices without public transactions counted by FINTRX. Funds flow from realized gains of partners and personal wealth into venture rounds that can be disclosed that month.
The active list is re-ranked monthly; if the number of deals drops next month, the rankings will be immediately rewritten. The asset size rankings will not change simultaneously.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Venture capital firms create family offices from partner wealth to decouple personal checks from fund LP rules. Perennial's 17 rounds in one month rely on a16z's project flow, not on building a separate fundraising machine. YZi's second place in deal count but two orders of magnitude smaller in round amounts indicates it appears more in early or small-scale financings, rather than in the follow-on lists for billion-dollar valuations. Activity and wealth are split into two tables.
Capital flows from public company divestitures, fund carry, and wealth from exchange founders back into rounds that can be captured by data providers that month. Family offices have no fund deadlines and could invest in ultra-long-term assets, but the monthly active list pressures them to show up at the pace of venture capital. The disclosed amounts use total round figures because real contributions are covered by privacy clauses, and rankings can only count names.
In contrast, Hillspire's 15 direct investments a year and Iconiq serving multiple family offices for Silicon Valley founders show the industry's shift from wealth management to transaction exposure: those willing to be counted among the 109 deals gain the "most active" label.
This represents capital concentration: visible venture capital cap tables tilt towards a few tech-origin family offices. The mechanism is that data providers only count public transactions, so the offices that can best follow the venture capital rhythm in issuing press releases replace the old money families that only buy farms and stocks.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
- The active list counts names, not check thickness.
- When family offices follow venture capital rhythms, they become funds without LPs.
- The wealthiest offices often do not appear on the most active list.