About
Who we are
A permanent capital partner for long-term business building
The Pritzker Organization (TPO) partners with management teams to build and grow businesses over the long term. TPO combines the institutional capabilities of a private equity firm with the flexibility of a family office. The character of our capital gives us the luxury of a mindset that is not driven by fund cycles, predefined exit timelines, or short-term optimization.
Our primary investment vehicle is 1902 Capital. It is backed by The Margot and Tom Pritzker Science Foundation and the Tom Pritzker family. With this structure, we invest flexible, permanent capital. Our structure is designed to align with management to pursue long-term opportunities, support companies through cycles, and build enduring value alongside exceptional business leaders.
Our approach is flexible by design. We invest across industries, structures, and situations, including control, minority, and partnership-oriented investments. Rather than force a company into a predetermined model or timeframe, we shape our capital and involvement around the needs of the business, its management team, and its stakeholders. Our long-term orientation is a strategic advantage: it allows us to be patient when patience is required and decisive when opportunity emerges.
Our History
Decades of investing experience
TPO’s unique history over the last 70+ years has led to work on 300+ transactions giving us the opportunity to work on building scores of companies over long periods of time. That history gives us the experience, pattern recognition, and perspective to navigate complexity and build businesses with patience and discipline.
The Pritzker Family traces its roots to Nicholas J. Pritzker, who immigrated to Chicago in 1881 and established Pritzker & Pritzker as a law firm in 1902. By the early 1950s, the firm had evolved into a merchant bank for the family’s business holdings, focused on acquiring and building companies to create long-term value. In the 1990s the firm’s name was changed to The Pritzker Organization (TPO) to reflect its commercial, rather than legal, mission. From that early start, our mindset was always that value was driven by its leaders, products and customers.
Across successive generations of leadership — from A.N. Pritzker to Jay Pritzker to Tom Pritzker — TPO has used our family capital to found, acquire, and build companies with partners and management teams. That approach produced a significant and diverse portfolio of primarily privately held businesses. Today, TPO is led by Tom Pritzker, who has worked at the firm for more than 40 years, and a team of senior investment professionals. That business-building orientation and focus on alignment with partners remains central to the firm’s culture today.
In 2022, the family established The Margot and Tom Pritzker Science Foundation (Pritzker Science), a philanthropic organization which exists to serve society by advancing scientific progress, grounded in the belief that science holds tremendous potential to improve humanity’s condition. Subsequently, substantially all of the Pritzker family’s business interests were contributed to 1902 Capital, which has two primary shareholders: the Margot and Tom Pritzker Science Foundation and Tom’s family. TPO invests on behalf of 1902 Capital, creating a true permanent capital vehicle that is designed to outlast existing generations and further institutionalize our commitment to deploying a meaningful portion of our growth back into society through science.
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What we deliver
Permanent capital, flexible partnership, disciplined execution, stewardship mindset
Across every partnership, we invest as stewards of long-term capital, with a responsibility to our shareholders, partners, and the institutions connected to our work.
The Margot and Tom Pritzker Science Foundation
Serving society through science.
Pritzker Science believes that pursuing science’s most consequential possibilities can advance humanity.
Our approach to accelerating scientific knowledge is defined by our Four Core Design Principles that, in combination, reflect our distinctive institutional model. Through a select set of Grand Challenges, Pritzker Science exists to create the conditions for consequential scientific progress to be realized, expanding the boundaries of human understanding and achievement across generations.
The Pritzker family of brands
Across business, venture, and science, the Pritzker family’s organizations share one belief: what matters most is built to last.
We don’t believe that “one size fits all”. Our approach has always been to understand the needs of the business and then craft the structure to address those needs.