The ultra-rich getting richer is money in the bank for Triangle software company
I’m Brian Gordon, tech reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.
Break out your Patek Philippe watches and vintage Château Lafite Rothschild wine. This week’s newsletter is luxuriating in a rarefied stratosphere of wealth. The global population of billionaires has risen 27% so far this decade. No tiny violins needed for millionaires; they possess close to half of all personal wealth on earth, according to UBS.
To manage their finances — from taxes to inheritance to investments — ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWIs) often rely on family offices. These firms act like chief financial officers — nor for companies, but for families. And like the number of billionaires, there are more single-family offices than ever (rising by one-third since 2019, Deloitte found).
This has been excellent for business, says Satyen Patel, executive chairman of the Morrisville software company Eton Solutions. “In the last three years, we have quadrupled our revenue, and we’ve tripled our customer base,” Patel told me on a video call Thursday, during his work trip in Dubai.
Eton Solutions spun out of a Chapel Hill family office called Eton Advisors in 2015. Its technology promises to improve family offices by integrating all their clients’ wealth on a platform that updates daily. “Not just liquid wealth,” Patel said. “But also alternatives, whether it’s private equity, property, planes, yachts, jewelry, wine collections, what have you.”
With the so-called Great Wealth Transfer underway, as aging Baby Boomers pass down their holdings to younger generations, Patel believes family office software will thrive. He said Eton Solutions employs more than 500 people worldwide, with around 40 to 50 workers at its Triangle headquarters (and others in Dubai, Singapore and India). The company, which raised $58 million last year, counts more than 1,000 families on its platform.
What does the escalating consolidation of global capital mean for us? There are signs in business and political headlines every day. This was just a glimpse into ultra-rich families — and how one local company grows alongside their swelling net worths.
Novo wages war on GLP-1 compounder
Novo Nordisk, a major Triangle employer and local manufacturer of the blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy, has sued Hims & Hers Health for patent infringement after Hims debuted (and then canceled) a $49 pill with Wegovy’s active ingredient.
Both sides had choice words for the other. “Novo Nordisk’s lawsuit is a blatant attack by a Danish company on millions of Americans who rely on compounded medications for access to personalized care,” Hims & Hers wrote in a statement. Novo’s stance on Hims? “Their conduct poses risks to US patients, infringes our intellectual property rights and makes a mockery of US FDA’s world-class drug approval framework.”
Novo Nordisk is the largest private employer in Johnston County. Long focused on treating diabetes, it has raced to manufacture weight-loss drugs at its North Carolina facilities as it competes against Eli Lilly and compounding pharmacies like Hims & Hers in the booming market for GLP-1 obesity drugs.
Hims & Hers stock fell 30% this week, and Novo Nordisk’s lawsuit isn’t the only reason. Last Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it would begin cracking down on GLP-1 drugs it hasn’t approved, something Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have urged the government to do.
Clearing my cache
- Data centers could be coming to Fort Bragg, as the U.S. Army considers leasing land to public and private developers.
- More data center news: Chatham is the second North Carolina county to approve a one-year pause on new data center permits, citing a desire to consider their resource impacts and zoning.
- North Carolina’s MrBeast is moving into fintech. Greenville-based Beast Industries has acquired the youth-oriented financial services app Step, which gives users access to interest-free loans, financial literacy videos and games for cash.
- Two of North Carolina’s biggest startup supporters — NC IDEA and the Wireless Research Center — are launching an accelerator for entrepreneurs. The RIoT Accelerator Program (or RAP) will start this spring, with applications due next week.
- IBM, a significant Triangle employer and owner of Raleigh’s Red Hat, promises to triple entry-level hiring in 2026.
- Among the software stocks plummeting over AI disruption fears is Wilmington financial tech company nCino, which has lost a third of its market value in 2026 alone. “From our perspective, we believe there is a significant disconnect between market sentiment and what we have been hearing from our customers and prospects who look to us to lead them on their artificial intelligence adoption journeys,” nCino CEO Sean Desmond wrote in a statement to The N&O.
National Tech Happenings
- U.S. job growth over the past two years has been overstated, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced. Last year, for example, 69% fewer jobs were added than initially estimated.
- North Carolina’s nCino isn’t the only SaaS provider struggling on Wall Street. Artificial intelligence has gone from a share price booster to an existential threat for software-as-a-service firms like ServiceNow (down 32% in 2026), Adobe (down 24%), and Salesforce (down 28%).
- More AI takeover news: Artificial intelligence featured in 23% of last weekend’s Super Bowl commercials.
Thanks for reading!
If you enjoyed this newsletter, share it with a friend. If it was forwarded to you, sign up here to receive it every Friday.
This story was originally published February 13, 2026 at 8:27 AM.
