RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Joshua Kushner has just announced he is teaming up with former Disney CEO Bob Iger to buy the Los Angeles Lakers for a record-breaking $12.5 billion.
The new sale still needs approval from the NBA’s Board of Governors, but it would mark the largest sale price for a professional sports team in U.S. history—and just the latest in Kushner’s string of very lucrative investments.
Joshua Kushner is the younger son of real-estate tycoon Charles Kushner (who was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2020 and is now the U.S. ambassador to France). His older brother, Jared Kushner, is the son-in-law and former advisor to President Donald Trump, and his wife is the supermodel Karlie Kloss.
But Kushner made a name for himself at just 26 years old when he founded Thrive Capital in 2011. Since then, his firm has backed some of the most notable startups of the past decade, including Instagram, Spotify , and OpenAI .
He previously gave Fortune insight into his investment strategy, hot off the heels on his bet on the ChatGPT maker.
Joshua Kushner: Why I bet $1.3 billion on OpenAI
As ChatGPT (and with it, its parent company OpenAI) has gone on to become one of the most valuable AI ventures in the world, Kushner and Thrive’s profiles have soared.
At the time, not many were willing to invest in the newcomer, and even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself told Kushner the company was anything but a sure bet. But Thrive has ultimately put in more than $2 billion into the ChatGPT maker since its inception. Most recently, it invested roughly $1 billion in OpenAI at a $285 billion valuation in December.
At the November 2024 Fortune Global Forum in New York City, Kushner revealed he invested in the company for two key reasons: He believed in the person running the company, and he had a gut instinct the company would stand the test of time.
“Since day one as a firm, we have been very much oriented towards being extremely concentrated in people and ideas,” the CEO revealed, adding it’s the people steering the ship who often keep it afloat. “In our world, there’s an ephemerality to technology. Those assets are fairly limited, but I think most importantly, it’s so driven by the person who’s running those businesses.”
As well as investing in people, he also said he abides by the investment philosophies of Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet.
“We’ve always believed in the Munger-Buffet way of the world, power of compounding—one of the wonders of the world—and to hold these companies for a very long period of time,” he added.
“We have been of the belief that there’s a very small amount of companies that one should be a part of. You need to be their most meaningful partner. You need to be extremely long term,” Kushner said, adding that in his eyes, OpenAI is like “Fifth Avenue”—a jewel you own for decades to come.
“We have deep respect for Google and Meta and xAI, but our belief is that OpenAI is going to be one of those, and we feel very lucky to be partnered with them,” he added.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman once said Josh Kushner makes ‘high-conviction bets’ and ‘doesn’t care’ what other investors think
Kushner, now 41, first met Altman in 2011. But it wasn’t until 2022, at a closed-door event for tech CEOs in Arizona, that the duo went on a walk together and reconnected.
Altman had been making note of Kushner’s investment in founders at splashy startups, including Slack, Instacart , and payment giant Stripe—staying loyal and lavishing them with attention even during rocky stretches.
“He invests in a style that is close to what I do myself,” Altman previously told Fortune ‘s Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell about Kushner. “Josh makes high-conviction bets on high-quality companies and founders, and he doesn’t care too much about what other investors think. I feel a lot of camaraderie with that.”
A few months later in early 2023, Thrive led a round in OpenAI, investing nearly $130 million at a $29 billion valuation. Today, ChatGPT’s maker is valued at around $895 billion—up from $157 billion when Kushner spoke to Fortune just under two years ago.
Meanwhile, Thrive was most recently valued at $12 billion —making Kushner, who has a majority stake in his company, the richest in his famous family, with an estimated $5.2 billion net worth.
And as for Iger and Kushner, their partnership didn’t start with the Lakers. Iger started working with Thrive Capital in September 2022, and the venture capital firm already holds minority stakes in the San Francisco Giants and the Miami Heat. Before that, Kushner owned a piece of the Memphis Grizzlies. Meanwhile, Kushner and Iger had previously been tied to a possible NBA expansion team in Las Vegas.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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