The Altman Network

Investigation Events

Persons of Interest and Profiles

Sam Altman Self-Dealing & Conflict Architecture

Scooter Braun

Co-founder and General Partner of TQ Ventures, which invested in TrialSpark’s October 2018 venture round; early personal investor in OpenAI; formerly managed Karlie Kloss, the wife of Joshua Kushner (Thrive Capital founder and Formation Bio’s longest-standing institutional backer); entertainment-industry capital flowing into clinical trials and AI through overlapping personal and financial relationships.

Scott Samuel “Scooter” Braun (born June 18, 1981, in New York City) is an American businessman, investor, and former talent manager. He attended Emory University in Atlanta but did not complete a degree, instead parlaying his work as a college party promoter into a career in entertainment. Braun is best known for discovering Justin Bieber on YouTube in 2007 and subsequently building one of the most successful artist management rosters in the music industry, including Ariana Grande, Usher, Kanye West, Demi Lovato, J Balvin, Dan + Shay, and Zac Brown Band [1] [2].

In 2019, Braun’s Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Records, which owned Taylor Swift’s first six albums’ master recordings. The acquisition led to one of the most public and contentious disputes in music industry history, with Swift publicly accusing Braun of bullying and stripping her of control over her own work. The controversy significantly impacted Braun’s public image. In 2021, HYBE (the Korean entertainment company behind BTS) acquired Ithaca Holdings for $1.2 billion, and Braun became a senior advisor and board member at HYBE. He retired from artist management in 2024 and now serves as Chairman of Ithaka Management Group, running his family office’s portfolio across multiple sectors [3].

Investments and TQ Ventures

Braun co-founded TQ Ventures in 2018 with Schuster Tanger and Andrew Marks. The firm is based in New York City, manages over $2 billion in assets across three funds, and has made 126+ investments globally. TQ is led day-to-day by Tanger and Marks, with Braun in a co-founding and general partner capacity. The portfolio includes Clubhouse, Noom (behavioral health), Kindbody (fertility), Liquid IV (acquired by Unilever), and Discord [4] [5].

Beyond TQ, Braun’s personal investment portfolio is extensive. His own website lists him as “an early investor in companies such as Uber, Spotify, Waze, Dropbox, Pinterest, Discord, Deel, Coupang, Lyft, Ro, Noom, OpenAI, Scale AI, Nvidia, Groq, Kraken, Rhode, and Liquid I.V.” [6]. The OpenAI investment places Braun in the same company as Thrive Capital and Sound Ventures — co-investors in both OpenAI and Formation Bio. Whether Braun’s OpenAI position is personal or through TQ Ventures is unspecified, but the disclosure on his personal website suggests it is a direct investment.

TQ Ventures invested in TrialSpark’s October 2018 venture round. The firm is not listed on the Series C or Series D investor sheets, suggesting early-stage involvement without continuous follow-on. However, Braun’s personal OpenAI position means his financial interests still touch the network through the OpenAI-Formation Bio commercial partnership (Muse, November 2024), even if TQ’s direct Formation Bio position was not maintained [7].

The Kloss-Kushner Connection

Braun managed Karlie Kloss — who is married to Joshua Kushner, the founder of Thrive Capital [8]. This means Braun had a direct professional-personal relationship with the spouse of Formation Bio’s most continuous institutional investor.

The significance is not that Braun and Kushner conspired — there is no evidence of that. The significance is that the social network through which Formation Bio’s early capital was assembled was extremely tight. Braun managed Kushner’s wife. Braun and Kushner both invested in Formation Bio through different vehicles (TQ and Thrive) in the same October 2018 venture round. Both are listed as OpenAI investors. The investment relationship and the personal relationship overlap.

This pattern — co-investors connected by social, familial, or professional relationships beyond the deal itself — recurs across the Formation Bio capitalization table. Moritz and Altman maintain a “degree of removal” through sequential rather than simultaneous investments. Kushner and Altman’s relationship runs through personal loyalty (the November 2023 crisis). Braun and Kushner’s relationship runs through Kloss. The capital flows follow the social graph.

Philanthropy and Humanitarian Positioning

Braun serves on the national boards of Pencils of Promise (founded by his brother Adam, building schools in developing countries) and the Make-A-Wish Foundation. He also supports Fuck Cancer and HIAS (a refugee assistance organization). He organized several high-profile global events including March for Our Lives (gun reform), One Love Manchester (Ariana Grande’s benefit concert after the Manchester Arena bombing), and Hand in Hand (hurricane relief, raising $55M+ for Hurricane Harvey and Irma) [9].

This philanthropic profile is relevant to the investigation’s broader theme: across the Altman network, commercial actors consistently maintain high-visibility humanitarian platforms that provide reputational insulation for their investment activities. Kutcher has Thorn (anti-trafficking). Kushner co-founded Oscar Health (ACA insurance) and UniThrive (education access). Altman has OpenResearch (UBI) and the Giving Pledge. Braun has Pencils of Promise, Make-A-Wish, and disaster relief. The pattern is not that philanthropy is insincere — it may be entirely genuine — but that it creates a public identity layer that makes scrutiny of commercial activities more difficult. Questioning the investments of someone who organized March for Our Lives carries a social cost that questioning a faceless fund manager does not.

Nodes / Open Questions

  • Is Braun’s OpenAI investment personal or through TQ Ventures? His personal website lists it among personal investments, not under the TQ section.
  • What is the current status of TQ’s TrialSpark/Formation Bio position? Not on Series C or D — exited, diluted, or held?
  • Braun managed Karlie Kloss. Did the Braun-Kloss management relationship facilitate introductions between Braun/TQ and Kushner/Thrive for the Formation Bio deal?
  • HYBE acquired Ithaca Holdings for $1.2 billion (2021). Does HYBE have any AI or healthcare investments that intersect with the network?
  • Braun’s tech incubator “Silent Labs” — what companies has it produced and do any touch healthcare or AI?
  • Noom (TQ portfolio) uses behavioral science and AI for health interventions. Does Noom’s model overlap with Formation Bio’s Muse patient recruitment AI?
  • Braun invested in Scale AI (data labeling for AI models). Does Formation Bio use Scale AI or similar data labeling services for its AI Drug Hunter or Muse systems?
  • Braun invested in Groq (AI chip company). Does the Groq investment connect to OpenAI’s compute infrastructure or Formation Bio’s AI operations?

Sources

  1. [Archive] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_Braun)
  2. [Archive] (https://www.crunchbase.com/person/scooter-braun)
  3. [Archive] (https://scooterbraun.com/about)
  4. [Archive] (https://tq.vc/)
  5. [Archive] (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tq-ventures)
  6. [Archive] (https://scooterbraun.com/investments)
  7. [Archive] (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kareemzaki)
  8. [Archive] (https://www.crunchbase.com/person/scooter-braun)
  9. [Archive] (https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.jfunders.org/resource/resmgr/conference/2026/speakers/Scooter_Braun_bio.pdf)