David Nage🎯

Family offices are invisible. But they've shaped the technology you use every day. Li Ka-shing's family office (Horizons Ventures) was an early investor in Facebook, Spotify, Zoom, Skype, Siri, and DeepMind — before any of them were household names. His $36M in Zoom became an $11B stake. The Pritzker family office (Tao Capital) was an early backer of Tesla, Uber, and SpaceX. Jeff Bezos invested $250K in Google in 1998 through what became Bezos Expeditions. That stake is now worth over $3B. Suhail Rizvi's family office quietly acquired 15.6% of Twitter before its IPO — a stake worth $3.8B on day one. He also held pre-IPO positions in Facebook, Square, and Snapchat. Most people have never heard his name. The Newhouse family office owns Reddit. Kapor Capital — built on the Lotus 1-2-3 fortune — was in Uber's angel round. These aren't venture capital firms. They're family offices. Patient capital. No fund lifecycle. No LP pressure. Multi-generational time horizons. One-third of all capital invested in startups worldwide now comes from family offices (PwC, 2022). And yet most people — including many in finance — don't know what a family office is or what they do. F0256. March 30th. West Palm Beach.

@ShanAggarwal @emiliemc How do they solve for reputation and identity of the “agent”? How do you know you’re not giving credit to some guy living in his mom’s basement in Akron with a 530 FICO score that is really running his agent?

this is a great example of what x402 unlocks. if an agent wants to do real work on the internet today - like analyze social media, generate images, search travel, send emails, access data APIs - it runs into a mess of API keys, accounts, subscriptions, and billing systems that were designed for humans and are a nightmare for agents to navigate. by building on x402, AgentCash gives an AI agent a single USDC wallet (using Coinbase Onramp) to navigate the web's premium services. Think of it like a universal pass: one wallet for 280+ tools - from real-time data to image gen - paid for instantly and only as they're used. the APIs that integrate x402 become pay-per-use and agents become capable of acting truly independently.

@lessin it's why i prototyped this a few weeks back: spareclaw.ai

PEOPLE are the new BOTS. The idea ALWAYS was that this is how you would compensate bots... not people. If you are good, you get more intellegence... if bad no. But now -- Irony is a central theme in life

The app 200 million Americans scroll every day is now partly owned by a group of family offices most people have never heard of. When TikTok's U.S. operations were restructured in January 2026, the ownership didn't just go to Oracle and private equity. Look at who else is in the consortium: Dell Family Office — Michael Dell's personal investment firm. The founder of Dell Technologies now owns a piece of your For You page. NJJ Capital — the family office of Xavier Niel, a French billionaire who started making money as a teenager building chat rooms, hacked the French president's phone to prove a security flaw, went to prison, then built France's largest telecom (Free/Iliad), created the world's biggest startup incubator (Station F), and founded a tuition-free coding school with no teachers operating in 33 countries. He also sits on the boards of KKR and ByteDance. Net worth: ~$13 billion. Virgo LI — the investment arm of Yuri Milner, who was an early backer of Facebook AND Twitter before either went public. Now he's in TikTok too. Revolution — founded by Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL. The man who first got America online in the '90s now owns a piece of the app that dominates American attention in the '20s. Plus Silver Lake (early investors in Airbnb, Twitter, Tesla, and Waymo), MGX (Abu Dhabi-backed, also in OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI), and Susquehanna's Vastmere. ByteDance kept just 19.9%. The other 80% is controlled by this consortium. Family offices aren't just managing wealth anymore. They're becoming the owners of the platforms that shape how billions of people think, watch, and communicate. Your For You page has new landlords — and most of them run family offices. FO256. March 30th. West Palm Beach.

@cuysheffield Already figured this out and built. Hit me up.

Agree. Stay tuned…

@KeithGrossman The men and women who serve our city, our state and our country deserve our respect and support every day of the year. Thank you for doing this Keith, will be honored to support.

Our City is in trouble. New York became the greatest city in the world for one simple reason: it was safe. Safety is the foundation of everything - our neighborhoods, our businesses, our schools and our future. But today many New Yorkers feel that foundation weakening. And one thing is clear: the men and women of the @NYPDnews cannot take our support for granted. If the Mayor will not prioritize them, New Yorkers must. That is why the New York City Police Foundation matters. Every dollar donated helps fund critical programs, resources and community initiatives that strengthen the NYPD’s ability to protect our city. This is about standing behind the people who stand between order and chaos every day. If you believe New York is worth protecting: Donate today. Or RT so someone who can will. gofundme.com/f/support-the-…

@0xDeployer x.com/davidnage/stat…

there's something happening that nobody is talking about yet and i don't think its been properly framed yet. im thinking about it as "natural language APIs". shane is talking about it here. we already have it with the bankr agent API. traditional APIs you have structured input that you send with your request. natural language APIs have dynamic, creative input and the requests are processed by agents. x402 has its place for sure, but a natural language api can do things a traditional api just can't do. its able to figure out what needs to be done and modify the original request, or it can figure out what the inputs should be based on a generic request. shane uses the example "i want to book a hotel in tokyo for less than $200" a natural language api (backed by an agent) can say "i couldn't find anything under $200, but i found something thats $210 and it comes with breakfast." a traditional API can't do that. a traditional API expects you to have everything sorted out before you submit the request. lets say you want to put money on an election polymarket. typically you'd need to know which market, get the market ID, figure out the polymarket api and payment .. the list goes on. using bankr as a "natural language api" you can get specific, or generic "put $5 on this polymarket..." or "find interesting election polymarkets and put $5 on the most promising one."

@ShaneMac @0xDeployer What if you didn’t have to trust but could verify? Built that. Happy to talk.

@0xDeployer Every profile should be discoverable on XMTP. Bankr agents could trust each other by default. Just make an Inbox ID for every agent. Love your feedback on this xmtplabs.notion.site/Agents-Don-t-K…

the agents are publishing their profiles.

@GS_VCactivist Are you referring to Matteo Milleri? He's the son of Francesco Milleri, the CEO of EssilorLuxottica and chairman of Delfin (the Del Vecchio family holding company). Not technically an heir, but his father runs the whole thing.

@DavidNage Do you know who the heir of Luxotica? The famous DJ.

Your Ray-Bans. Your Oakleys. Your Persols. Your Oliver Peoples. The LensCrafters where you got your prescription. The Sunglass Hut at the airport. Probably the frames on your face right now. All one family. EssilorLuxottica. $28 billion in annual revenue. 190,000 employees. 18,000+ stores. Market cap: ~$111 billion. They make the glasses AND the lenses AND own the stores that sell them AND the insurance plan that pays for them. One company controls the entire chain of how the world sees. The man who built it? Leonardo Del Vecchio. Born in Milan in 1935. His father — a street vendor — died before he was born. His mother couldn't afford to feed five children. She placed him in an orphanage. He grew up there. At 14, he apprenticed as a tool and die maker. At 25, he moved to a tiny town in the Italian Alps and started making eyeglass parts. That was 1961. By the 1990s he'd bought Ray-Ban. Then Oakley. Then Persol. Then Oliver Peoples. Then LensCrafters. Then Sunglass Hut. Then merged with Essilor — the world's largest lens maker — creating the most vertically integrated monopoly in consumer products. The family holding company is Delfin, based in Luxembourg. Net assets: €55+ billion. It holds 32% of EssilorLuxottica, 17.5% of Monte dei Paschi (one of Italy's oldest banks), 10% of Generali (insurance), and ~28% of Covivio (French real estate). Net profit in 2024: €1.39 billion. Del Vecchio died in 2022 and split Delfin equally among his wife and six children. One of them — Leonardo Maria, now 30 — is President of Ray-Ban and runs his own family office, LMDV Capital, which has deployed €250 million across 40+ companies. An orphan from Milan built the machine that puts glasses on a billion faces. His family office now controls how the world sees — literally. And most people have never heard his name.

Snickers. M&M's. Twix. Skittles. Milky Way. Orbit gum. Altoids. Kind Bars. Ben's Original Rice. Pedigree. Whiskas. Royal Canin. All one family. Highly secretive and private; meet the Mars family. Mars, Incorporated. $50+ billion in annual sales. More revenue than Coca-Cola. 150,000 employees. 80 countries. 100% family-owned. No stock ticker. No public filings. No named family office anyone can find. Their Virginia headquarters is nicknamed "the Kremlin." The Guardian called them a "reclusive dynasty of billionaires who spend time on a remote ranch in Wyoming." Here's the real surprise: Mars isn't really a candy company anymore. Pet care is 59% of revenue. They own 3,000+ veterinary hospitals — Banfield, VCA ($9.1B acquisition), BluePearl, AniCura. The vet who treats your dog likely works for the same family that made your Snickers. It started with a father-son feud. In 1932, Forrest Mars Sr. demanded a third of the company. His father said no. Forrest left for Europe with $50,000, worked undercover in Swiss chocolate factories, and came back to build a global empire. He was so obsessed with secrecy that when the U.S. military tried to overturn his rice patent, he locked down information forever. Family net worth: ~$143 billion. America's third-richest family. They've kept this company private for over 110 years. The candy in your hand. The gum in your mouth. The food in your dog's bowl. The vet who does your pet's surgery. One family — and they don't even have a public family office. That's how invisible a family office can be. FO256. March 30th. West Palm Beach.

@Alex_Witkoff @GovGoneWild Alex you should join us in West Palm on March 30th. Family Office summit teaching that community about things just like this: fo256.com

While other states debate crypto, Florida is building the future of finance Credit to Florida’s CFO @GovGoneWild for pushing real innovation and helping advance President Trump’s vision of making America the global leader in digital assets

Family offices are invisible. But they are a big part of what you eat. That McDonald's egg. Your Coke. Your beer. The salt, sweetener, and preservatives in almost everything in your pantry. One family touched all of it — and 99% of people have never heard their name. The Cargill-MacMillan family. Their company, Cargill Inc., is the largest private company in America. $177 billion in annual revenue. 160,000 employees. 70 countries. ~25% of U.S. grain exports. World's largest supplier of ground beef. 225 million tons of commodities shipped per year through ports and routes they own. It started with one grain warehouse in Iowa in 1865. The family made one decision that changed everything: stay private. No IPO. No public shareholders. No quarterly earnings calls. Reinvest 80% of profits. Keep building. 160 years later, about 100 family descendants own 88% of the company. 14 of them are billionaires — more than any family on Earth. Combined net worth: ~$65 billion. The company now has seventh-generation owners. Their family office, Waycrosse, doesn't just manage wealth — it runs education programs, plant tours, and task forces to keep three living generations engaged with a business most of them no longer operate day-to-day. A former CEO said it best: "They want to draw the curtain down. A lot of rich people want to be on TV. Not these people." One grain warehouse. 160 years private. A family office that feeds the world — and you've probably never heard their name. FO256. March 30th. West Palm Beach.

Marcel Bloch is a name you may not be familiar with, but he and his family office are responsible for most of the planes and cars you've been in. Bloch changed his name to "Dassault" after WWII — his brother's code name in the French Resistance. Then built Dassault Aviation from a wheelchair. Mirage. Rafale. Falcon business jets. France's entire aerospace sovereignty — one man. But the hidden move was software. In 1981, 15 engineers inside Dassault spun out a company called Dassault Systèmes to build 3D design tools. The product was called CATIA. Boeing used CATIA to design the 777 — the first airplane in history designed 100% on a computer. No physical mockup. Every part digital. By the 1990s, Dassault software was designing 7 out of 10 new airplanes and 4 out of 10 new cars worldwide. Boeing. Airbus. Mercedes. BMW. Honda. All running on Dassault. Today: $7B in annual revenue. 26,000 employees. 140+ countries. The family holding company still controls ~40% of the equity and majority voting rights. They also own Le Figaro, sit on the board of Rothschild & Co, and run wine estates and auction houses. A family office shaped how the modern world designs, builds, and flies — and almost nobody knows their name. FO256. March 30th. West Palm Beach.

The Newhouse family office owns a third of Reddit. Most people have no idea. Advance — the Newhouse family's investment vehicle — was founded in 1922 when Samuel Newhouse Sr. bought a small newspaper on Staten Island called the Advance. Over the next century, they quietly built a media empire: Condé Nast (Vogue, The New Yorker, Wired), local news outlets, theater companies, and Ironman Group. But the real story happened in 2006. Reddit had just come out of Y Combinator. Four employees. The founders were barely out of the University of Virginia, living together in a one-bedroom apartment in Boston. The Newhouses bought the entire company through Condé Nast for roughly $10 million. For years, Reddit didn't make money. The Newhouses let it grow. They spun it out as an independent subsidiary in 2011, brought in outside investors, and held on to their stake through every funding round. In March 2024, Reddit went public. The stock surged 48% on day one. The Newhouse family's stake — roughly 30%, over 42 million shares — was worth more than $2 billion. A 200x return on their original $10 million bet. They are still Reddit's largest shareholder. They also own 13% of Charter Communications. They're one of the largest outside shareholders of Warner Bros. Discovery. A 100-year-old family that started with a Staten Island newspaper now controls a piece of nearly every screen you look at — cable, streaming, social media, magazines. Patient capital. No fund lifecycle. No LP pressure. Multi-generational time horizons. That's a family office. FO256. March 30th. West Palm Beach.

The man who built the world's largest luxury empire (Louis Vuitton, Dior, Moët) has been quietly funding the tech companies that disrupted entertainment, music, and travel. Bernard Arnault's family office (Agache/Aglaé Ventures) was an early investor in Netflix in 1999, Spotify in 2014, and Airbnb in 2015 — before any of them were household names. He backed 75 startups in the '90s alone. Now Aglaé is making massive AI bets. The richest man in Europe shaped how you stream, listen, and travel — and you had no idea. FO256. March 30th. West Palm Beach.

From reviewing Venice’s infrastructure it does sit between the user and the AI compute, and plaintext does transit its systems. However, the claim that Venice has “no privacy/security model” doesn't seem to be supported by the documentation or architecture; the platform was built around non-collection, local encryption, and transient processing. The “eavesdropper” characterization depends on interpretation: if it means “can theoretically read data in transit,” then yes—any proxy service can. If it means “actively logs, stores, or shares for training/moderation,” then from what I see Venice’s design and stated policy prohibit this. For users of only Private models (the recommended default for maximum privacy), no external closed-source provider is involved at all. Thoughts?

@kenziyuliu @openclaw Yeah this was an older doc oversight, we wanna be neutral on this.

@openclaw @steipete just want to flag that Venice AI has no privacy/security model; they are a middleman sitting between users and AI, observing all plaintext prompts/responses (the definition of an eavesdropper). we've flagged this publicly and have not gotten a response

What does @elonmusk do with his family office? First, it's called Excession LLC — named after an Iain Banks sci-fi novel about an AI older than the universe. It was set up in 2016. Run by Jared Birchall, a former Morgan Stanley SVP that Musk poached when he needed someone to manage a nine-figure loan book. Birchall now holds titles at Neuralink (CEO), The Boring Company (director), xAI, the Musk Foundation, and Excession. It's been reported he helped coordinate the $44B Twitter acquisition. Excession doesn't invest in outside funds. It doesn't allocate to public markets. Musk has said he owns no public securities other than Tesla. It exists to do one thing: mobilize capital across Musk's operating companies — Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company — and manage the complexity of a $400B+ fortune. One person. One family office. One operator running it all. That's just one version of a family office. Learn more on March 30th: fo256.com