Family offices kept buying clean energy through a turbulent July

Family offices made 57 direct investments in July, level with June, according to figures from the private wealth data platform Fintrx reported by CNBC on 6 August 2026. The month gave investors reasons to sit still: a sharp equity correction and energy prices pushed higher by the Iran conflict. The deal count did not move.

The headline transaction was Blue Origin’s $10 billion fundraise, which included $2 billion from Bezos Expeditions, the family office of Jeff Bezos. Fintrx ranks Bezos Expeditions as the most active family office investor of 2026 so far; it backed five artificial intelligence startups in June alone.

Clean energy took an unusual share

AI companies accounted for the bulk of July’s deals, as they have all year. The more telling figure is that more than 15 per cent of the month’s investments went to clean energy and sustainability firms, at a moment when many institutional investors have stepped away from the sector.

The month’s largest round in the category came from Antora Energy, a Californian maker of thermal batteries, which closed a $550 million Series C on 30 July at a $2.47 billion valuation. The venture investor John Doerr joined the round as a new backer; his private firm, Foris Ventures, has also put money into clean energy companies including Panthalassa, Pacific Fusion and Rondo Energy. John Arnold, the former energy trader, participated in a $17.8 million Series A for Hephae Energy Technology, an advanced geothermal drilling business, which closed in July. Builders Vision, the family office of the Walmart heir Lukas Walton, joined a $43 million Series A for Lydian, a producer of synthetic aviation fuel, alongside Grok Ventures, the investment firm of Atlassian’s chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Against the institutional tide

Renewables have had a hard run with mainstream capital. The backlash against ESG strategies and the current US administration’s hostility to climate policy pushed many allocators out. The tide only began to turn this spring: Morningstar recorded $3 billion of inflows into US sustainability funds in the second quarter of 2026, the first positive quarter after fourteen consecutive quarters of net outflows.

Family offices, on the survey evidence, never really left. A Citi Private Bank poll of 346 family offices last September found more than half expected to allocate to sustainable investments within the next five years. A Bank of America survey published in November found a similar share of family office principals expecting their heirs to maintain or increase allocations to sustainable or impact investing.

What to read into it

The economics have changed under the label. Power demand from AI data centres, together with the fuel-price shock that followed the Iran conflict, has given clean energy an investment case that no longer rests on ESG branding. Our reading is that the families writing these cheques are underwriting electricity demand rather than making a values statement, and Doerr’s own framing of clean energy as the only route to meeting surging power demand points the same way.

For advisers, the succession angle deserves attention. If the next generation holds or raises these allocations, as the Bank of America data suggests, sustainability sits closer to the core of family office portfolios than the institutional retreat would imply. One month of Fintrx data proves little on its own. Fourteen quarters of outflows followed by a quarter of inflows, with family offices in the deals throughout, starts to look like a pattern.

Sources: CNBC, 6 August 2026; Business Wire on the Antora Series C, 30 July 2026.