UK-based family offices’ investment appetite for private equity and venture capital fell ‘sharply’ between 2024 and 2025, research from AYU has revealed.

The global private members’ club for family offices and investment professionals polled its family office membership over two years on their private equity and venture capital investment sentiment.

It found that the proportion of UK family offices interested in making new investments in private equity declined from 73 per cent in 2024 to 35 per cent in 2025.

A similar trend was identified in venture capital investment appetite, with interest in making new investments falling from 67 per cent to 33 per cent over the same period.

AYU said family offices provided a valuable indicator of market sentiment, as they were largely insulated from the short-term swings that influence retail investors, while their investment outlook tended to be more dynamic and opportunistic than many institutional investors.

Therefore, it argued that movements in family office allocations were a useful early indicator of changing priorities in the wider market.

AYU added that the shift away from private equity and venture capital may reflect uncertainty about the medium-term economic outlook, while also highlighting the attraction of strong short-term opportunities emerging in other markets.

However, the club noted that a simpler explanation could be that much of the capital committed to private equity and venture capital in previous years has not yet been fully returned, reducing the number of families able to commit fresh funds to these strategies.

“Anecdotally, the reduced appetite in the private equity and venture capital areas is being attributed by some families to heavy allocations in the previous year, but these survey results nonetheless represent a meaningful rebalancing of focus among these LPs,” commented AYU CTO, Toby Abel.

“Families are still actively allocating significant additional capital to these sectors, but fewer families are now doing so compared with 2024.”

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