SONE Capital Management

SONE Capital Management

SONE Capital Management traces its capital to the 2012 sale of Athene Annuity and Life Company, where J. Kelly Sone served as founder and CEO. The transaction, valued at $1.55 billion, closed with British insurer Aviva and generated the liquidity core that still funds the office's investment program. Sone structured the family office in West Palm Beach, Florida, maintaining a deliberately low public profile while holding operating roles at major private companies including Chick-fil-A, where he serves on the board of directors. SONE Capital deploys primarily into direct real estate and media assets, operating outside the fund-of-funds or manager-selection model common among family offices of comparable wealth origin. The real estate book includes multifamily and commercial holdings concentrated in the southeastern United States, while the media exposure has historically included positions in traditional and digital broadcasting platforms. The office favors equity control or significant minority stakes in cash-flowing entities, avoiding early-stage venture and complex structured credit. No co-investor club or feeder-vehicle structure is publicly associated with the firm. The office operates with a skeletal disclosed footprint — no known institutional co-investment vehicles, no publicly reported fund closes, and no solicited external capital. J. Kelly Sone appears as the sole named principal. No secondary offices or disclosed professional headcount are available in public filings. In 2023, Sone was noted as continuing to serve on the board of Chick-fil-A, reflecting a governance posture that extends beyond passive family-office investing into active corporate oversight of one of the largest private restaurant chains in the United States (per public record). SONE Capital's structural differentiator is the combination of an insurance-exit fortune, active board-level participation at a major private operating company, and a direct-investment posture with no third-party limited partners. This architecture sidesteps the institutional fundraising cycle entirely — deployment pace and sector choice are constrained only by the principal's own pipeline and conviction. The result is a family office that behaves more like a private holding company than a diversified allocator.