Billionaire Joshua Kushner just bought the Lakers for $12.5 billion—OpenAI’s Sam Altman once said he ‘doesn’t care’ what others think

Joshua Kushner has just announced he is teaming up with former Disney CEO Bob Iger to buy the Los Angeles Lakers for a record-breaking $12.5 billion.

The new sale still needs approval from the NBA’s Board of Governors, but it would mark the largest sale price for a professional sports team in U.S. history—and just the latest in Kushner’s string of very lucrative investments.

Joshua Kushner is the younger son of real-estate tycoon Charles Kushner (who was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2020 and is now the U.S. ambassador to France).

His older brother, Jared Kushner, is the son-in-law and former advisor to President Donald Trump, and his wife is the supermodel Karlie Kloss.

But Kushner made a name for himself at just 26 years old when he founded Thrive Capital in 2011.

Since then, his firm has backed some of the most notable startups of the past decade, including Instagram, Spotify , and OpenAI .

He previously gave Fortune insight into his investment strategy, hot off the heels on his bet on the ChatGPT maker.

Joshua Kushner: Why I bet $1.3 billion on OpenAI As ChatGPT (and with it, its parent company OpenAI) has gone on to become one of the most valuable AI ventures in the world, Kushner and Thrive’s profiles have soared.

At the time, not many were willing to invest in the newcomer, and even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself told Kushner the company was anything but a sure bet.

But Thrive has ultimately put in more than $2 billion into the ChatGPT maker since its inception.

Most recently, it invested roughly $1 billion in OpenAI at a $285 billion valuation in December.

At the November 2024 Fortune Global Forum in New York City, Kushner revealed he invested in the company for two key reasons: He believed in the person running the company, and he had a gut instinct the company would stand the test of time.

“Since day one as a firm, we have been very much oriented towards being extremely concentrated in people and ideas,” the CEO revealed, adding it’s the people steering the ship who often keep it afloat.

“In our world, there’s an ephemerality to technology.