Traditional family offices quietly relied on old-school bank relationships. But today, the world’s wealthiest people want to be able to act on their own, move instantly, and stay strong in a world that is becoming more unstable every day. In May 2026, we’re seeing the ‘wait and see’ approach dissipate.
On one side, we have families operating peacetime infrastructures in an increasingly volatile, multipolar world. On the other side, we have families who are building AI-native command centres, actively abandoning unipolar market assumptions, and deploying capital into hard infrastructure.
Below is a breakdown of what the smartest money in the room actually did in May
The demise of the dollar
For the last forty years, the fundamental assumption of global wealth management was that the United States Dollar was the undisputed, risk-free baseline. In May 2026, that assumption was formally abandoned by the institutional family office sector.
The UBS Global Family Office Report 2026, released in late May, delivered a staggering data point: 65% of family offices now expect confidence in the US dollar’s reserve status to weaken.
This is not a fringe economic theory; this is the consensus of the wealthiest families on the planet. Driven by concerns over unsustainable global debt levels, the weaponisation of financial systems, and the rising threat of persistent inflation, family offices are fundamentally reassessing their exposure to USD-denominated assets.
In response, we are seeing a massive, structural shift toward multi-currency frameworks. The Euro and the Swiss Franc are emerging as the preferred alternatives, but the pivot goes far beyond fiat currency.
According to the UBS data, an unprecedented 60% of family offices plan changes to their strategic asset allocation over the next 12 months—the highest level of portfolio rotation ever recorded by the bank.
Where is this capital flowing? It is moving geographically and structurally. Family offices are actively reducing their concentration risk in North America and systematically expanding exposure to Asia Pacific, Greater China, and Western Europe. They are recognising that in a multipolar world, capital must be as agile as the geopolitical forces attempting to tax, regulate, or trap it.
AI inside family office operations
It’s safe to say that the ultra-wealthy are not using AI to make their investment decisions, rather they are using it to slash the cost and complexity of their operational infrastructure.
Citi’s May 2026 report, “AI in the Family Office,” revealed that AI adoption among family offices has nearly doubled, jumping from 13% last year to 22% today.
But the critical finding is how it is being used. According to the report, 57% of these family offices are using AI specifically for performance reporting, document processing, and administrative reconciliation.
As noted in May by the Capital Founders OS analysis, the operational layer of running money has suddenly become cheap, while the human judgment layer has become infinitely more valuable. The average cost of running a family office with over $1 billion in AUM hovers around $6.6 million annually.
At the Family Wealth Report FinTech Forum 2026, industry leaders confirmed that AI is rapidly evolving from a tool that simply “answers questions” into an agentic system that executes workflows. We are seeing AI models being trained to automatically categorise transactions. They are able to process accounts payable and generate real-time consolidated reporting across complex, illiquid asset structures.
However, the forum also issued a severe warning: AI is only as good as the underlying data. Family offices running on fragmented spreadsheets and closed legacy systems are finding that their AI deployments hallucinate and fail. You cannot build a 21st-century AI command center on a 20th-century data foundation.
Human capital and the Middle East
Because the technology is solving the back-office data problem, the talent war within the family office space has shifted. As highlighted by top wealth executives in May, the hardest roles to fill are no longer investment advisors.
The critical bottleneck is finding operational orchestrators. That means executives who understand how to fuse complex family governance, multi-jurisdictional tax law, and AI-native technology into a single, cohesive engine.
The executive moves documented in May 2026 perfectly illustrate this trend towards institutionalisation. We saw European fund services giant Universal Investment Group explicitly appoint Dr Alva Devoy as Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer (CSTO) with a clear mandate to drive the effective use of AI and data architecture at scale.
Simultaneously, the geopolitical migration of wealth is dictating where this talent is moving. In a major mid-May intelligence update on senior global wealth moves, Citi Wealth announced the appointment of Khaled Ibrahim as the Director of Global Family Office for EMEA. Tellingly, he is based in Citigroup’s Dubai office.
Dubai (DIFC) and Abu Dhabi (ADGM) are aggressively positioning themselves as the new operational hubs for the world’s elite. As London faces regulatory and tax pressures, and as Western markets struggle with debt, the Middle East is offering the ultimate trio for the modern family office: zero friction, regulatory clarity, and a hyper-modern digital infrastructure.
Investing in hard assets
For the past decade, family offices chased the high-beta returns of software-as-a-service (SaaS) startups, consumer apps, and abstract digital platforms. In May 2026, the investment thesis has sharply pivoted back to the physical world.
To understand where money is flowing, look at the asset allocations outlined in the UBS Global Family Office Report 2026. While 65% of family offices are investing in the AI value chain, they are not just buying Nvidia stock or investing in LLM startups. They are buying the picks and shovels of the AI revolution. According to the data, family offices are aggressively allocating capital towards Power and Resources (37%), Infrastructure (37%), and AI-enabled healthcare (33%).
The ultra-wealthy have realised a fundamental truth: Artificial intelligence is entirely dependent on physical infrastructure. It requires an astronomical amount of electricity, specialised cooling systems, and massive, secure data centres. Family offices are bypassing blind-pool private equity funds to take direct, controlling stakes in power grids, renewable energy transition projects, and logistics hubs.
This trend was further reinforced by executive moves in the real estate debt sector. Investec Bank notably appointed Hollie Sleigh as head of offshore real estate lending in May, signalling a massive demand from private clients and family offices to finance hard-asset acquisitions outside of their home jurisdictions. They want tangible, yield-generating operational assets that provide an inflation hedge. They don’t want to lock up their capital in illiquid, highly abstracted 10-year venture funds.
By contrast, the UBS report noted that cryptocurrency remains a remarkably niche allocation for the institutional family office. Only 24% of offices invested, typically at an exposure of around 1%. The top 0.1% are not betting the dynasty on Bitcoin. They are betting it on the electrical grid that powers it.
To sum it all up
The events of May 2026 show that we are entering an era characterised by geopolitical fragmentation. Countries are weaponising currencies and AI is delivering machine-speed technological disruption. Families are building Sovereign AI infrastructure and acquiring hard infrastructure assets directly. They are shifting to multi-currency frameworks and diversifying their jurisdictional footprint across multipolar hubs like Dubai and Singapore. Those who don’t adapt risk being left behind by those who do.
