For years, Michael Dell avoided investing in technology, believing he already had sufficient exposure through the company bearing his name. That is now changing.

BDT & MSD, which manages much of the billionaire’s wealth, has hired Darren Cohen, a Goldman Sachs partner who oversaw the bank’s investments in Anthropic and Databricks, to invest and raise capital for a new technology fund, according to people familiar with the matter. The firm also raised capital for a smaller technology vehicle last year, the sources said.

The appointment further signals the direction being taken by BDT & MSD. Byron Trott’s merchant bank, which serves long-established industrial families including the Waltons, Pritzkers and Wrigleys, merged in 2023 with MSD, Dell’s investment vehicle, which had avoided software investments for years. It is separate from DFO, the billionaire’s family office, although Dell is a major investor in many of its funds.

“When I arrived at MSD, we did not really have a growth equity business, which seemed a little absurd to me, because this is Michael Dell’s family office,” Gregg Lemkau, co-CEO of BDT & MSD alongside Trott, said in 2022. “For a long time, the approach had been to diversify away from technology.”

However, the wealth being generated by artificial intelligence is proving difficult to ignore, even for BDT & MSD’s industrial and old-economy clientele. The firm’s core business of advising wealthy families is well positioned to add the billionaires emerging in Silicon Valley to its client base.

It has already begun doing so on a smaller scale. Its first technology fund raised $832 million last year and holds stakes in OpenAI, Waymo, Helsing, Revolut and Jeff Bezos-backed Project Prometheus.

Cohen spent 23 years at Goldman Sachs. He initially invested the bank’s capital in companies that later became key components of major market groups, including NYSE, IHS and Thomson Reuters. More recently, he oversaw investments in Anthropic and Helsing.

He will lead BDT & MSD’s technology investment business alongside Ryan Nolan and work closely with Juliet de Baubigny.