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After largely becoming billionaires in the background, the Kushner family leapt into the public eye for most people once Donald Trump took office in the White House. Meet Joshua Kushner, the war profiteer and AI investor who now owns the Lakers The Lakers’ new owner, Josh Kushner, is a billionaire with lots of baggage. But while father Charles Kushner, mega-rich real estate developer turned pardoned criminal and American ambassador to France, and elder son Jared have taken very hands-on, forward-facing roles, Josh has remained a bit further behind the scenes. At least until this week, when he and Bob Iger agreed to buy the Lakers. But any rush to try to separate Josh from his brother and father or label him as “the good Kushner” falls short of painting the full picture. When Mark Walter took over the Lakers, we took a deep dive to learn about a fairly private figure outside of his Dodgers ownership. With Kushner, it’s much the opposite, as we had to parse through a lot of stories to try to learn more about who now owns the Lakers. Thrive Capital and AI The lion’s share of Kushner’s wealth comes from Thrive Capital, a venture capital firm he launched in 2010 while still at Harvard. After raising funds, he made some savvy investments, none more so than Instagram. Kushner launched Thrive in 2010 with a $5 million friends-and-family round, followed in 2011 by $40 million from Princeton University and other endowments. He quickly made smart bets on Harry’s, Warby Parker--and Instagram…The deal valued Instagram at $500 million. A few days later Facebook bought it for $1 billion--a 2x return in less than a week. Thrive is now valued at somewhere around $5 billion and manages $25 billion in assets, all according to Forbes, with investments in Spotify, Stripe and SpaceX. In April of this year, Thrive Eternal launched with a mission to preserve “iconic franchises and cultural institutions,” as written on the company’s website. These are assets with qualities that cannot be replicated by technology. Iconic franchises and cultural institutions rooted in tradition, identity, and shared experience. In a world shaped by abundant intelligence where creation scales and distribution fragments, we believe they will matter even more. That message came with the announcement of a stake purchase in the San Francisco Giants. It’s not the first time Josh tried to purchase a baseball team, as he and his family attempted to buy the Marlins in 2017. Thrive Eternal, though, became much more known to sports fans this summer when it was one of the central figures in FIFA’s attempt to effectively sell off 20% of the rights to the World Cup, in simplified terms. The plan failed spectacularly. Less than a month separated that and the purchase of the Lakers. The same week he made the deal for the franchise, he sent a letter to Thrive Capital investors about the “consequences of AI.” On paper, this sounds great. As we move into the future, we run the risk of AI overtaking institutions. Ensuring sports franchises aren’t left by the wayside is something fans could certainly get behind. The problem? Thrive has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, starting in January of 2023. They invested another $1.3 billion in 2024, then an additional $1 billion in late 2025. There’s nothing legally wrong with playing both sides of the coin. But it’s pretty hard to believe much of what is said about protecting legacies against AI when you’re also funding big AI platforms. Politics and war-profiting Typically, we don’t discuss politics on the site. We’ve covered it at times over the years, but only when it became particularly newsworthy. However, in this situation, it’s relevant to help outline Kushner’s values. In trying to distance Josh from his brother, Jared’s, politics, many people pointed out that the new Lakers owner is an outspoken Democrat. As recently as this summer, Josh’s wife, supermodel Karlie Kloss, reaffirmed that she and her husband are Democrats. It’s more than just talk, too. He didn’t vote for Trump in 2016. He also attended the Women’s March in Washington D.C. that year. He donated $50,000 to March for Our Lives in 2018 and $250,000 to the political action committee (PAC) Growth Democrats in 2024. A Forbes profile in 2017 is the most he has talked about his politics, an article which had a pretty clear mission to put some distance between his brother and father from a political standpoint. “It is no secret that liberal values have guided my life and that I have supported political leaders that share similar values,” he says. “But neither political party has a monopoly on the truth or on constructive ideas for our country. It’s important to be open minded and learn from differing opinions.” The latter half of that quote is a sentiment he has echoed many times. He told Bloomberg that he’s a Democrat but also felt “it’s possible to have relationships with people who you politically don’t align with.” He is still close with his brother, who he is also still very much in business with. Josh and Jared previously co-owned a Maryland property-management company, JK2, that was ruled to have “violated state consumer protection laws by collecting debts without required licenses, charging tenants improper fees and misrepresenting the condition of rental units.” The company had to pay $3.25 million in penalties and restitution to settle a lawsuit, but did not admit any wrongdoing. That same aforementioned Forbes profile included him talking about his relationship with his brother, whom he called his best friend, and said he calls Ivanka Trump, Jared’s wife and the daughter of Donald Trump, his sister instead of his sister-in-law. Again, it’s a wholly just viewpoint and approach to life. To some, political leanings matter. To others, it doesn’t. But what should definitely matter is what happened earlier this year because — even as someone who leans left — this isn’t a “left vs. right” debate but one about “do you care how people make their money?” In early March, Thrive Capital co-led a fundraising round for Anduril Industries Inc., a defense tech start-up with the goal to “modernize the military with AI and advanced manufacturing.” In short, the company builds AI-powered drones and weapons systems. They most notably provided drones to Ukraine during its war with Russia. It has also been reported that Thrive Capital holds stakes in Anduril, though how much has not been publicly disclosed. Barely a month after the fundraising round was announced, Anduril was handed a $20 billion contract from the Trump administration in a deal that was questionable at best. To summarize, the government posted the contract notice in December for three weeks during the holidays. As a result, only four companies initially reached out before three of them fell silent. Because of that, the government could bypass normal open-competition requirements and award the contract to Anduril. Is it a coincidence that a Kushner-backed company was awarded a massive contract? Perhaps. But given the history of the current administration in the White House, do you think it was just a coincidence? Ultimately, it’s hard to come out of this feeling great about the new owner. Much of the good that he’s done feels like it’s immediately offset by other investments in the things that are tearing it down. So while the Lakers are now backed by one of the wealthiest people in the country, it comes with a lot of baggage. You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.