Thrive Capital

Seed-round investor in TrialSpark (2017) and continuous backer through four consecutive rounds to a $1.8B valuation; largest external shareholder of OpenAI; orchestrated Sam Altman’s reinstatement during the November 2023 board crisis and was rewarded with exclusive future investment rights.

Thrive Capital is a New York–based venture capital firm founded by Joshua Kushner in 2009 with a $5 million seed check from General Catalyst. The firm’s strategy centers on concentrated, high-conviction bets — fewer companies, larger checks, deeper relationships. Early wins included Instagram (doubled his money in 72 hours before Facebook’s acquisition), Twitch, and Warby Parker. By 2018, Thrive scored a major exit when GitHub, in which the firm held a roughly 9 percent stake, sold to Microsoft for $7.5 billion. The firm also took early positions in Stripe, Slack, Robinhood, and Spotify. Thrive’s funds grew progressively: $10 million (2009), $40 million (2011), $150 million (2012), $400 million (2014), $700 million (2016), $1 billion (2018), $3.3 billion (2023), and $10 billion in February 2026 — the largest fund it has ever raised, nearly double the size of its previous fund, with $1 billion earmarked for early-stage investments and the rest for growth-stage bets. Assets under management reportedly grew from $2 billion in 2020 to roughly $25 billion by 2024 — a 1,150 percent increase during a period in which the Altman relationship was the firm’s defining position. 1. [Archive] (https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/23/josh-kushners-thrive-capital-brings-in-1b/) 2. [Archive] (https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/17/thrive-raises-10b-for-new-fund-its-largest-yet/) 3. [Archive] (https://www.hustlefund.vc/post/angel-squad-josh-kushner-investments-the-thrive-capital-founder-who-backed-openai-at-29-billion-and-rode-it-to-500-billion)

Kushner attended Harvard Business School — connecting him to the broader Harvard nexus documented across the Altman network (Larry Summers, Sandra Smith, Lawrence Katz, Jacob Trefethen, Mark Fishman). Altman has publicly characterized the relationship as personal, not merely transactional: “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.” 18. [Archive] (https://fortune.com/ranking/most-powerful-people/2025/josh-kushner)

Kushner is the younger brother of Jared Kushner, who served as senior advisor to President Donald Trump. Their father, Charles Kushner, is a real estate developer who was convicted of tax evasion, witness tampering, and illegal campaign contributions in 2005; he served 14 months in federal prison before being pardoned by President Trump in 2020 and subsequently appointed United States Ambassador to France in 2025. Joshua has described himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” publicly criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the Affordable Care Act, and was photographed at the January 2017 Women’s March in Washington. His wife is supermodel Karlie Kloss. 4. [Archive] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Kushner) 5. [Archive] (https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/10/28/jared-kushners-brother-slams-trump-administrations-efforts-to-weaken-obamacare/23259454)

Formation Bio / TrialSpark: In From the Beginning

Thrive Capital invested in TrialSpark at the seed round in September 2017, alongside Sequoia Capital. These are the only two investors documented as present at the earliest stage, and both remained through every subsequent round — seed, venture, Series C, and Series D — making them the company’s most continuous backers across a seven-year investment arc. By the venture round (October 2018), the investor base expanded to include Sound Ventures (Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary), Spark Capital, and Felicis Ventures. The Spark Capital co-investment is notable: Spark Capital also led Anthropic’s Series C and separately co-invested with the OpenAI Startup Fund. Spark Capital later hired Fraser Kelton, OpenAI’s former Head of Product. Thrive partner Kareem Zaki is named on the Series C and Series D rounds and has publicly expressed gratitude to Joshua Kushner alongside Moritz, Altman, and other backers. 6. [Archive] (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kareemzaki)

The seed-round timing is notable. Thrive invested in TrialSpark in September 2017, four months after the May 17, 2017 restructuring day when LabNook legally became TrialSpark and filed two Brooklyn clinical trial site DBAs (Pioneer Midwood and Pioneer Sheepshead Bay). Thrive entered the company at its first branded identity — not during the anonymous LabNook era (June 2014 – May 2017), but immediately after the entity rebranded and began operating clinical trial sites under neighborhood names.

When Sam Altman co-led the Series C in September 2021, taking the company’s valuation to $1 billion, Thrive participated alongside Sequoia. Altman’s entry as lead investor represented a convergence of Thrive’s portfolio company (TrialSpark) and Thrive’s future marquee relationship (OpenAI, where Thrive invested $130 million in early 2023). By the Series D in June 2024, when a16z led a $372 million round, Thrive was still present. Sanofi entered as both an investor and a future commercial partner in the same round. Thrive has been at the table for every significant capital event in this company’s history — through three name changes, a pivot from clinical trial software to pharmaceutical acquisition, and a $372 million securities offering filed under the old legal name TrialSpark, Inc. seven months after the public rebrand to Formation Bio. 7. [Archive] (https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0002028122)

OpenAI: From Investor to Kingmaker

Thrive Capital’s relationship with OpenAI began earlier than most accounts suggest. Thrive was reportedly the only external investor in a critical 2022 funding round, before the widely reported $130 million investment in early 2023 at a $29 billion valuation. In October 2023, Thrive led a tender offer that valued OpenAI at $86 billion, purchasing employee shares. At this point, Thrive had committed approximately $700 million in total to OpenAI, making it the company’s largest external shareholder. 8. [Archive] (https://www.fortune.com/longform/josh-kushner-net-worth-thrive-capital-investments-openai-100-billion-valuation) 19. [Archive] (https://coconote.app/notes/c1d84c73-5a9e-4833-bdd2-b6f503f8d3fa)

On November 17, 2023, the OpenAI board fired Sam Altman. The first phone call that Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer, made was to Joshua Kushner. Lightcap later told Fortune that Kushner’s response was not about the investment: “It was, ‘How are you? How’s the company? I’m here for you, I support you guys. What can I do to help?’” Kushner later said Thrive “immediately went to war” after learning of the decision. For five days, Kushner and the Thrive team ran a continuous 24/7 video call, coordinating investor pressure on the OpenAI board. Altman later said: “During that crazy week where I got fired and rehired, he just put his entire life on hold. He didn’t leave his hotel room for 72 hours.” A competing investor, speaking on condition of anonymity, described Kushner differently: “I wouldn’t want to get crossways with him. When there’s someone he’s loyal to at stake, it’s not pleasant to be on the other side. He can be merciless.” In a later interview, Kushner reflected on the crisis using a Lord of the Rings analogy: “Sam, Greg, OpenAI have the Ring, and everyone is willing to do whatever they can to take it.” Asked whether power corrupts, he answered: “Yes.” Five days later, Altman was reinstated and the board was reconstituted. 9. [Archive] (https://fortune.com/2023/12/07/joshua-kushner-thrive-openai-stripe-skims-warby-parker-kkr) 10. [Archive] (https://colossus.com/article/joshua-kushner-thrive-new-world/) 20. [Archive] (https://www.aol.com/news/josh-kushner-uses-lord-rings-165727863.html)

What followed has been characterized as “probably a masterstroke.” In late 2024, Thrive invested approximately $1 billion in OpenAI at a $150 billion valuation and negotiated the exclusive right to invest another $1 billion at that same valuation through January 2026 — effectively a call option on the most valuable private company in history. By early 2025, OpenAI’s valuation reached $300 billion, and by February 2026, Thrive confirmed it had invested roughly $1 billion more at a $285 billion valuation. The loyalty that Kushner demonstrated during the crisis was rewarded with preferential access to the most sought-after private investment opportunity of the decade. 11. [Archive] (https://www.hustlefund.vc/post/angel-squad-josh-kushner-investments-the-thrive-capital-founder-who-backed-openai-at-29-billion-and-rode-it-to-500-billion)

The crisis also demonstrated something structural about OpenAI’s governance. OpenAI’s corporate structure was designed to separate the nonprofit board’s authority from investor interests. In practice, investors including Thrive, Microsoft, Sequoia, and Andreessen Horowitz exercised significant informal control — pressuring the board to reverse its decision and effectively selecting the replacement directors. The governance structure meant to protect OpenAI’s mission from commercial pressure was overridden by the commercial interests it was designed to constrain. 12. [Archive] (https://digidai.github.io/2025/11/23/joshua-kushner-thrive-capital-openai-157-billion-bet-deep-analysis/)

Oscar Health: The Healthcare Thread

Before OpenAI and before TrialSpark, Kushner’s most prominent venture was Oscar Health, a health insurance startup he co-founded in 2012 with Mario Schlosser and Kevin Nazemi. Oscar sold ACA marketplace plans and was valued at $2.7 billion by 2016. The company went public in 2021 (NYSE: OSCR), with Thrive’s stake valued at $1.21 billion. Oscar reported an $87 million loss in its first quarter as a publicly traded company. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund was an early investor. Kushner is also a minority owner of the Miami Heat. 13. [Archive] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Kushner)

Oscar Health is relevant to the Formation Bio investigation for two reasons. First, it demonstrates that Kushner’s investment thesis has consistently included healthcare as a core vertical — TrialSpark was not an outlier in Thrive’s portfolio but part of a sustained healthcare strategy that includes health insurance (Oscar), clinical trials (TrialSpark/Formation Bio), medical billing (Cedar, co-invested with Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund), and now pharmaceutical acquisition. Second, Oscar Health became entangled in the COVID-19 pandemic response when it launched a coronavirus testing website in March 2020 — the same month the Trump administration was publicly claiming Google was building a national testing site. State records uncovered by Mother Jones revealed that Jared Kushner had previously been listed as a co-owner of Oscar’s parent company alongside Joshua, and Jared Kushner was simultaneously leading the administration’s pandemic response. Oscar Health was criticized for selling ACA plans in Ohio with a deductible of $15,800. 14. [Archive] (https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/23/facebook-posts/what-kushner-linked-company-has-do-coronavirus-tes/) 15. [Archive] (https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/guess-who-previously-owned-health-insurance-co-operating-coronavirus-testing-website/)

Joshua and Jared Kushner also co-founded Cadre, a real estate technology platform. Jared Kushner divested from Thrive Capital in 2017 upon entering the White House, but the early corporate structures of both Oscar and Cadre reflect a period in which the brothers’ business interests were intertwined. 16. [Archive] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Kushner)

The Lightcap Connection

Brad Lightcap’s first call during the OpenAI crisis was to Kushner. This positions Lightcap — the named recusal proxy for every Altman conflict of interest — as having a direct, personal, and ongoing relationship with Thrive Capital’s founder. Lightcap later described Kushner as a “support system” during the crisis. A LinkedIn post from a former OpenAI employee departing for Thrive Capital in 2026 thanked Lightcap specifically: “Special gratitude to Brad Lightcap for taking a bet on me.” That employee had previously worked at Stripe — another Thrive portfolio company — before joining OpenAI. The career pipeline flows through Thrive’s portfolio: Stripe → OpenAI → Thrive Capital. 17. [Archive] (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-kushner-711b45230/)

When Lightcap serves as OpenAI’s spokesperson for the Muse partnership with Formation Bio — a Thrive portfolio company since 2017 — he is simultaneously representing OpenAI’s commercial interests AND maintaining a personal relationship with Formation Bio’s longest-standing institutional investor. The recusal mechanism assumes that Lightcap can act independently from Altman’s interests. It does not account for whether Lightcap can act independently from Thrive’s interests.

The Network Position

Thrive Capital sits at a unique intersection in the Altman network:

Formation Bio: Seed investor (2017) through Series D (2024) — continuous four-round presence. Present before Altman’s Series C entry. Present when Altman’s investment created a 17.6x value increase for Moritz’s Crankstart Foundation holding.

OpenAI: Largest external shareholder. Orchestrated Altman’s reinstatement. Rewarded with exclusive investment rights. $2B+ committed across multiple rounds.

Stripe: $1.8 billion position (March 2023). Stripe processes payments for OpenAI. Patrick Collison (Stripe CEO) was hired as a YC partner in the same announcement as Elizabeth Iorns (the bio partner who enabled YC’s healthcare expansion).

Oscar Health: Co-founded by Kushner. Healthcare insurance. COVID testing website controversy linking Kushner family to pandemic response. Thiel’s Founders Fund invested.

GitHub: 9% stake, sold to Microsoft for $7.5 billion. Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz also profited from the same exit.

The co-investment pattern with Sequoia Capital is particularly consistent: Thrive and Sequoia are co-investors in Formation Bio (seed through Series D), GitHub (both profited from Microsoft acquisition), and share overlapping portfolio interests. Michael Moritz (Sequoia) and Joshua Kushner (Thrive) appear as named partners on the same Formation Bio rounds. Thrive and Spark Capital are also co-investors in Formation Bio, and Spark Capital led Anthropic’s Series C — meaning the same investor pool spans both sides of the OpenAI/Anthropic competitive divide. (Anthropic conflict flag: Spark Capital’s presence in both Formation Bio and Anthropic creates a pathway where competitive intelligence could theoretically flow through shared investor networks.) Thrive’s $10 billion February 2026 fund also includes positions in Anduril (defense technology) and SpaceX, further extending the firm’s footprint into government-adjacent sectors. 21. [Archive] (https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/17/thrive-raises-10b-for-new-fund-its-largest-yet/)

Why This Matters

Thrive Capital’s position in the network creates structural conflicts that existing recusal mechanisms do not address. The same firm that invested in TrialSpark in 2017, that helped reinstall Altman as OpenAI CEO in 2023, and that negotiated exclusive investment rights as a result of that loyalty, also benefits every time OpenAI enters a commercial partnership with a Thrive portfolio company. The Muse collaboration between OpenAI, Sanofi, and Formation Bio is a transaction where Thrive has financial interests on multiple sides: as Formation Bio’s longest institutional investor, as OpenAI’s largest external shareholder, and through the personal relationship between Kushner and the OpenAI executive (Lightcap) who serves as the public face of the partnership.

The question is not whether Kushner acted loyally during the crisis — by all accounts, he did. The question is whether that loyalty created a structural expectation of reciprocity that shapes how OpenAI’s commercial relationships with Thrive portfolio companies are evaluated, approved, and disclosed.

Nodes / Open Questions

What is the total dollar value of Thrive Capital’s position in Formation Bio across all rounds? Seed through Series D implies early entry at low valuations with significant appreciation.
Did Thrive participate in Formation Bio’s Muse partnership decision-making, either directly or through board representation?
Kareem Zaki (Thrive partner) is named on Formation Bio rounds. Does Zaki have a board seat or observer rights at Formation Bio?
The career pipeline (Stripe → OpenAI → Thrive) documented in LinkedIn posts — how many individuals have followed this path?
Thrive co-invested with Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund in Cedar (medical billing). Cedar operates in the same healthcare billing/payments space as clinical trial billing. Any connection to Formation Bio’s trial operations?
Does Thrive have positions in any other Altman-connected entities beyond OpenAI and Formation Bio?
Joshua Kushner’s AUM grew 1,150% (2020-2024) during the period when the Altman relationship became the firm’s defining position. How much of that growth is attributable to OpenAI appreciation vs. new capital inflows driven by OpenAI access?
Does Thrive have a board seat or governance role at OpenAI? What formal rights does the “largest external shareholder” hold?
Kushner attended Harvard Business School. What is the overlap period with other Harvard-connected network nodes (Summers, Trefethen, Mina, Katz)?
Thrive incubates companies internally — 12 spun up, at least 6 reaching unicorn status. Are any of these incubated companies connected to the Altman network or the healthcare/biotech space?
Jared Kushner divested from Thrive in 2017 but the early Oscar/Cadre corporate structures show intertwined interests. Is there any remaining indirect exposure through family trusts, fund interests, or other vehicles?
Spark Capital appears in both Formation Bio and Anthropic investor bases. Does Thrive have any direct or indirect Anthropic exposure?