When it comes to expectations for investment returns over the coming years, the AI investment boom has increased optimism among family offices in the Americas, despite three-quarters of them expecting the bubble to burst, a major report has found.
Campden Wealth and the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) spoke to 155 family offices across the Americas with an average net worth of $2.25 billion.
While 75 per cent of family offices expect the AI investment bubble to burst within five years, the report found ‘almost none plan to reduce their exposure’. In fact, within private market technology holdings, the report found 41 per cent intend to increase AI exposure.
[See also: Is the AI boom bursting wealth management’s bubble?]
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Meanwhile, more than half of family offices – 59 per cent – agreed that returns on AI investments will not meet current expectations, ‘even as they appear to keep investing’ the report said.
Adam Ratner, Campden Wealth’s director of research, told Spear’s: ‘I think of it as the AI paradox.’
‘My interpretation is that they are separating the technology from the stock price. They remain very positive about the longer-term potential of AI while recognising that some valuations and expectations may have run ahead of themselves.’
[See also: AI fuels fortunes of world’s growing billionaire class]
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Ratner said the closest parallel to what is unfolding now would be the early days of the internet, in which there was a boom, a bubble and then a much longer-term transformation.
‘In that sense, expecting a correction does not necessarily mean questioning the longer-term investment case,’ he explained.
The report surveyed 155 family offices across the Americas. The vast majority of these – 123 – were in the United States, while 21 were in Canada, and the remaining 11 across the other Americas.
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Among these family offices, there has been ‘an optimistic swing in sentiment’, the report found, due to much stronger investment returns in 2025 than many had expected.
‘Twelve months ago, the offices in our survey expected an average return of around five percent, and one in seven expected to lose money,’ wrote Dominic Samuelson, Campden Wealth’s CEO.
‘Having been too cautious, respondents have now swung firmly the other way. In the coming years, 84 per cent expect direct private equity to match or beat last year’s results, and 50 per cent expect developed market equities to match or beat last year’s return.’
In contrast to 2025, family offices reported greater anxiety this year related to the risk of major cyberattacks, the report also found – with 59 per cent citing it as an operational concern, compared with only 16 per cent last year.
