00:00Today on Forbes, how Jared Kushner's bold bets in the Middle East made him a billionaire.
00:08Jared Kushner's biggest private equity win so far is an Israeli business he tried to buy into
00:14more than a decade ago. In 2014, Kushner was 33 years old and the CEO of Kushner Companies,
00:21the New York City-based real estate company co-founded by his father and grandfather.
00:25Looking for new investments, he targeted the Israeli insurance and financial services firm
00:31Phoenix. Kushner entered into a tentative deal to buy a 47% stake in the company,
00:37enabled in part by a loan from the seller. All looked promising for a time,
00:42but regulatory hurdles soon proved too difficult and the bid fell through.
00:47Ten years later, he got a second chance. Through Affinity Partners, the private equity firm he
00:53founded in early 2021, he spent roughly a quarter of a billion dollars buying a nearly 10% stake in
01:00Phoenix since July 2024. One of Affinity's biggest bets to date, Kushner boasts that it's also the
01:07firm's quote, best investment. Kushner, now 44 years old, says he's already made an over nine times return.
01:16Thanks in part to bets like this, as well as his knack for raising funds from high-profile
01:23Middle Eastern backers, Kushner is now a billionaire. Forbes estimates his fortune at just over $1 billion,
01:30up from at least $900 million a year ago. He joins the billionaire ranks alongside his brother Josh,
01:37whose net worth is $5.2 billion, and his father-in-law, President Donald Trump,
01:42whose net worth is $7.3 billion. But rather than following Josh, whose venture capital firm is
01:49mainly focused on tech investments, or Trump, who these days makes most of his money from crypto bets,
01:55Kushner has largely gone his own way. Kushner left his family's real estate business in 2017
02:01to join the White House as a senior advisor for Trump's first term. That role led him to the Middle
02:07East, where he eventually helped negotiate the Abraham Accords, a set of normalization agreements
02:13between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and others. In January 2021, the same month Trump
02:20left the White House, Kushner set up Affinity Partners in the Miami suburb of sunny Isles Beach.
02:27Altogether, he's raised $4.6 billion, including $1.5 billion last year from two of his earlier backers,
02:34the Qatari Sovereign Wealth Fund, and Abu Dhabi-based Lunate, part of Emirati Royal Sheikh Tannoun's
02:41Royal Group. Kushner owns 100% of Affinity, which Forbes estimates is currently worth $215 million,
02:49up from $170 million in October. That makes it Kushner's second biggest asset after his 20% stake in
02:56his family's Kushner companies, worth $560 million, which is down from $580 million.
03:02Another good bet, buying a home on Florida's Indian Creek Island, the so-called billionaire
03:08bunker enclave, where both Jeff Bezos and the Emir of Qatar also own estates.
03:14Kushner bought his home for $32 million in 2020. That house, which he shares with his wife Ivanka
03:20Trump, is now worth at least $105 million before accounting for its mortgage, a nearly threefold
03:26jump in value. The rest of Kushner's wealth lies in cash, artwork, and other personal investments,
03:33though unlike his brothers-in-law and the president, seemingly no crypto. It's a wide-ranging portfolio,
03:40but these days he's laser-focused on Affinity. Private equity is a new realm for Kushner,
03:46whose prior expertise lay mostly in real estate. Perhaps wisely, he started slowly, spending less
03:52than $500 million through 2023. But he's beginning to ramp up heavily. Affinity had publicly deployed
03:59over $2 billion as of April, and is on track to invest at least $1 billion this year alone.
04:05The firm manages $4.8 billion in assets, according to its latest financial disclosure,
04:10filed in March. It now counts about 25 investments, including 22 portfolio companies,
04:16in at least eight countries across industries from fitness tech to car leasing. The firm's also getting
04:23in on the artificial intelligence boom. It recently backed AI infrastructure firm Universal AI,
04:29which raised $10 million from a roster of high-profile investors, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt
04:35and prolific Israeli-born venture capitalist Elad Gill. And last Wednesday, Kushner and Gill launched a
04:42new AI startup based in San Francisco, BrainCo, which has already raised $30 million from Affinity,
04:49Gill, and others, including Coinbase's Brian Armstrong, LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, and Stripe's Patrick
04:56Collison. Most of Affinity's investors came through connections Kushner made while serving in the White
05:02House. Affinity's backers pay about $60 million per year in fees. For full coverage, check out Monica
05:10Hunter Hart and Giacomo Tagni's piece on Forbes.com. This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.
Comments