HOW DID JOSH KUSHNER GET $3.3 BILLION?

Kushner paved a path outside his famous family. Now he's a billionaire, thanks to bold bets on Instagram, Stripe, and OpenAI - and he's running his biggest-ever portfolio. Here's how he did it.

- ALYSON SHONTELL

AN UNDER-THE-RADAR VC CLIMBS THE RANKS

JOHN COLLISON, the president of Stripe, had a very Silicon Valley problem.

The fintech company he had cofounded with his brother Patrick in 2010 was a juggernaut - a huge player in payment processing and financial software, and at one point the most valuable startup in America.

By the fall of 2022, however, Stripe was in a bind. Its sales had been rocketing upward at a 60% annual rate during the pandemic, leading Stripe to boost its spending - only to see its growth slow drastically as inflation rose. What's more, many of the startup's early employees would see their ownership shares in the company start to expire beginning in 2024. The founders wanted to make those employees whole, but buying their shares would cost a fortune: The tax bill alone would reportedly reach $3.5 billion.

Stripe needed to raise a lot of money, quickly. And with tech stocks plummeting as interest rates climbed, the timing couldn't be worse: It was certain to be a dreaded "down round." Stripe had raised money in 2021 at a $95 billion valuation; this time around, they'd be lucky to hit half that, and some investors would not want to re-up.

By September 2022, when John Collison went to The Weekend, an annual tech conference in Aspen, he could hear an ominously ticking clock in his head. But while there, he ran into a friendly face: Joshua Kushner, the founder of New York City-based boutique firm Thrive Capital. Thrive had invested in Stripe's 2014 Series C round, and Collison found himself explaining his conundrum to Kushner, who listened with what turned out to be a lot more than polite interest.