Thrive Capital has garnered in excess of $10 billion, representing its most substantial fund to date, enabling the organization to broaden its investing prowess across sectors from AI implementations and framework to outer space, automation, and life sciences. This capital has already been deployed in enterprises such as OpenAI, Stripe, SpaceX, and Skims.
The capital raising endeavor was notably oversubscribed, requiring Thrive to decline billions in prospective investments. The magnitude of the fresh fund, Thrive X, is twice the size of its preceding one and showcases the accomplishments of numerous of the fund’s burgeoning companies in recent times. Kushner posits that the AI revolution is merely commencing: “We anticipate every significant sector of the economy to undergo transformation. The victors will be more immense than our current comprehension.”
Thrive undertakes a relatively limited number of ventures, albeit substantial ones, with progressive capital infusions as firms expand. Typically, the fund invests in roughly a dozen novel organizations spanning diverse phases of advancement each year. “Our aspiration is to expand the fund to become the most significant ally for the preeminent ten firms annually,” articulated partner Karim Zaki.
The fund has already realized noteworthy achievements. Thrive initially endorsed OpenAI in January 2023, shortly following the introduction of ChatGPT, when the enterprise was valued at $29 billion. Subsequently, the fund considerably augmented its stake, proving to be a prudent decision: OpenAI’s valuation could potentially surge 30-fold, attaining $830 billion in the projected financing series.
In 2014, Thrive invested in payment giant Stripe at a valuation of $3.6 billion. That investment, together with subsequent rounds, has also demonstrated exceptional prosperity: Stripe is currently contemplating an employee tender initiative at a valuation of at least $140 billion. The fund was also among the earliest investors in SpaceX, when Elon Musk’s venture was valued at $38 billion. SpaceX currently reigns as the world’s premier privately held entity, possessing a valuation of $1.25 trillion subsequent to its amalgamation with xAI.
AI has constituted a fundamental motif underlying numerous of Thrive’s triumphs, encompassing Databricks, Cursor, and Anduril Industries. The fund will sustain its concentration on AI framework and implementations, in conjunction with other encouraging technologies. The fund’s present confidence is attributed in part to prudence during preceding market zenith: in 2021, the fund allocated only 64% of its procured capital and decreased public holdings, and amidst the decline in technology enterprise valuations in 2022-2023, Thrive aggressively augmented holdings in SpaceX, Stripe, OpenAI, Databricks, Ramp, and Wiz.
Headed by Josh Kushner, Thrive adopts an adaptable, loose-leverage methodology to investment, veering from the established venture capital blueprint. The fund invests in both private and publicly traded entities, cultivates its own emerging companies, and has even initiated a $1 billion investment mechanism to incorporate AI into established corporations. The fund’s surprising ventures encompass an undergarment business.
“Our objective is to collaborate with the foremost entrepreneurs, irrespective of the enterprise’s stage – nascent, growth, or public,” emphasized Thrive Capital partner Vince Hankes.
Source: Bloomberg