March 28, 2024

DealBook: Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital Raises $40 Million

Joshua Kushner, the 26-year-old son of real estate mogul Charles Kushner, has raised $40 million for his venture capital firm, Thrive Capital, according to a regulatory filing on Monday.

The fund, the firm’s second, includes several prominent investors including Princeton University, Hall Capital Partners, Wellcome Trust and the venture capitalist Peter Thiel, best known for his early bet on Facebook, according to a person close to the matter. Through co-investment deals with its limited partners, the firm has the option to invest as much as $100 million, said this person, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The new fund will focus primarily on technology start-ups in New York with a consumer or social bent, but it may also make investments in Latin America.

“New York has emerged as an ecosystem for technology and innovation; I believe that innovation today is less reliant on geography and more on how the Web works,” said Mr. Kushner, who is also a co-founder of Vostu, the largest online gaming company in Brazil. “The new capital efficiency of Web infrastructure enables companies to be built and scale from anywhere; New York just happens to be filled with some of the most creative and thoughtful people in the world.”

Since opening Thrive in 2009, Mr. Kushner has invested in more than two dozen companies, including the social connectivity tool Hot Potato, which was bought by Facebook, and the group messaging service GroupMe, sold to Skype on Sunday. Last year, Thrive also led a $1.25 million investment in Art.sy, an online art portal. The fund-raising round included Google’s then-chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt; the venture capitalist Jim Breyer; and Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, who also serves as an official adviser to Thrive Capital.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=2950e0e592a8baed4addb9bf0a1f1534