This article explores how AI and technology can help family offices identify, access, and invest in future winners.

The following article is from Michael Pomerleau, partner and co-founder at Investigate VC. The editors of this publication are pleased to use this article and hope it encourages conversations. The customary editorial disclaimers apply. To comment, email tom.burroughes@wealthbriefing.com and amanda.cheesley@clearviewpublishing.com.

Family offices have an obvious advantage when it comes to investing: capital. But capital alone does not tell you where the next generation of value will be created, which industries are approaching structural change, or which companies will ultimately emerge as the winners.

That requires intelligence.

Our Future Wealth Creation Study found that 83 per cent of family office CIOs believe that intelligence is becoming more important than capital when identifying future opportunities. Family offices clearly recognise the importance of intelligence. The challenge now is turning that recognition into investment capability.

How can family offices use AI and technology to systematically identify where value is moving, expand the opportunities they can see, and put better intelligence in front of investment decision-makers? We believe this is where the next evolution of the investment process needs to happen.

Capital is the starting point, not the investment system
Family offices already possess many of the ingredients required for investment success: patient capital, long-term horizons, entrepreneurial experience, sector expertise, and strong networks. But those advantages need to work together as a system.

At Investigate VC, we think about that system as a progression:

Capital → Intelligence → Access → Human Judgment → Portfolio → Future Wealth Creation

 
Capital provides the ability to invest. Intelligence helps determine where value is being created. Access connects investors with the relevant opportunities. Human judgment determines what to back, while portfolio construction provides a systematic way to participate in the potential upside.

AI and technology can strengthen this entire system. They allow investors to analyse larger information universes, continuously monitor industries, connect developments across sectors and geographies, and put better intelligence in front of investment decision-makers.

This does not replace human judgment. It strengthens the inputs to it. AI can expand what human investors are able to see, analyse, and act upon.

This creates an important opportunity for family offices. AI is not only something to invest in. Increasingly, it is something to invest with.

To find tomorrow’s winners, start with where value is moving
Another finding from our study points directly to how the investment process needs to change. Some 80 per cent of family office chief investment officers believe industry transformation will matter more than company selection over the next decade.

Again, family offices recognise the shift. The challenge is turning that belief into a repeatable investment process.

Company selection remains fundamental. But, before asking which company to invest in, there is another question worth answering: Where should we be looking for companies in the first place?

Investment opportunities often enter an investor’s field of vision through networks, introductions, managers, conferences, databases, or existing deal flow. The investment process then starts with the company and asks whether it represents an attractive opportunity.

Technology allows us to start earlier. Instead of beginning with “Which of the companies I am seeing should I invest in?” we can begin with “Where is value being created, and which companies should I therefore be looking for?”

That changes the sequence:

Industry → Industry Transformation → Value Migration → Opportunity Spaces → Companies → Investment Decision

This is what we describe in our Value Migration Framework as the shift from companies to industries. The company remains the investment but understanding how an industry is transforming can give investors a better idea of which companies to search for before the winners become obvious.

Putting the new investment process Into practice
At Investigate VC, we wanted to turn this principle into a practical investment capability. That led us to develop Sector Twin, our AI-powered approach to investment intelligence.

Sector Twin does not start with a database of companies. It starts by building a structured representation of an industry: its physical assets, operational capabilities, economics, workforce, market dynamics, structural challenges, and unmet needs.

We then analyse the forces transforming that industry. What is technology making possible? How are regulation and customer behaviour changing? Where are economics shifting? Which bottlenecks could disappear? Where could competitive advantage move?

The objective is to identify where those changes could cause value to migrate and translate that movement into specific opportunity spaces. Only then do we search for startups positioned to capture those opportunities. 

Take logistics as a simple example. Saying “AI will transform logistics” identifies a trend, but it does not tell an investor where to invest. We need to understand which parts of logistics will change, which bottlenecks could disappear, where costs could fall, what new capabilities could become possible, and where those changes could create new value.

Once we understand that, the search for companies becomes much more focused.

AI also allows us to look beyond traditional industry boundaries. A technology developed for aerospace might solve a problem in maritime. Computer vision developed for one application could create value in agriculture. Optimisation technology from one sector could transform the economics of another.

This matters because the company and the problem it solves do not necessarily originate in the same industry or geography. AI allows us to explore these connections at a scale that would be extremely difficult for an investment team to continuously analyse manually.

We are not simply using AI to find more companies. We are using AI to develop a better understanding of which companies we should be looking for in the first place. 

Demand more from your investment process
This shift changes what family offices should expect from venture investing.

For decades, a strong venture proposition could be built around relationships: a powerful network, access to founders, and proprietary deal flow. Those advantages still matter, but in a world where technology can fundamentally improve how opportunities are identified and evaluated, access alone is no longer enough.

If you invest through VC managers, demand more from them. Ask how they are using AI and technology to identify structural change. What proprietary intelligence are they creating? How are they searching beyond the companies and networks they already know? And how does their investment process help identify opportunities before they become obvious?

If you invest directly, the same challenge applies. Strong personal networks and direct access can generate attractive opportunities, but they do not necessarily provide a systematic view of what you are not seeing. Combining networks and human judgment with technology, data, and broader market intelligence can help reduce the risk of missing tomorrow’s winners.

At Investigate VC, this is the standard we are building towards. We combine technology and proprietary intelligence with global sourcing, sector expertise, human judgment, and systematic portfolio construction. Our investors gain access not only to the companies we select, but to the investment system behind how we find them.

This is also part of a broader change in how family offices operate. As NextGen takes a larger role, they are bringing different expectations about technology, data, transparency, and how investment decisions should be supported. The opportunity is to combine those new capabilities with the capital, experience, relationships, and long-term perspective that already make family offices distinctive.

Whether you invest directly or through managers, the challenge is the same: make sure your investment process is designed to find tomorrow’s winners not simply the opportunities already within reach.

About the study
This article draws on findings from The Future Wealth Creation Study 2026, a global research initiative conducted by Investigate VC exploring how family office CIOs think about future wealth creation.

The study was conducted using a panel of 1,000 AI-generated family office CIO profiles designed to reflect the diversity of the global family office ecosystem across geographies, investment styles, sizes and wealth origins.

This approach, often referred to as synthetic research, uses advanced AI models to simulate how specific groups of decision-makers might evaluate opportunities, risks and future scenarios.