Inside Jared Kushner's New AI Startup for Businesses

Forbes

Kushner teamed up with prolific solo investor Elad Gil and Luis Videgaray, the former Mexican foreign minister, to launch Brain Co., a startup that aims to help large businesses and governments apply AI to their operations.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2025/09/10/jared-kushners-new-startup-helps-businesses-figure-out-how-to-use-ai/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes, Jared Kushner's new startup helps businesses figure out how to use AI.

00:08Thrive Capital's Josh Kushner has emerged as one of the most active investors in artificial

00:13intelligence, making billion-dollar bets on startups like OpenAI, Databricks, and Anduril.

00:19Now his brother, and President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is getting in on

00:25the act by co-founding his own AI startup.

00:28Kushner has teamed up with tech investor Elid Gill and Luis Videgaray, the former Mexican

00:34foreign minister, to co-found BrainCo, which helps big corporations and governments use

00:39AI to improve their operations.

00:42The firm announced in early September that it had emerged from stealth and raised $30

00:47million in its Series A funding round, led by Kushner's private equity firm Affinity Partners

00:53and Gill's Gill Capital.

00:55It's also backed by billionaire angel investors like Coinbase's CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong,

01:01Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and Palo Alto Network's

01:08chairman and CEO Nikesh Arora.

01:12BrainCo, which was founded in 2024, has around 40 employees and a strategic partnership with

01:18OpenAI to build applications for its customers, which include 10 of the largest public companies

01:23in the world, per Forbes' Global 2000 list.

01:27The San Francisco-based startup has already won deals with companies like auction house

01:31Sotheby's, owned by billionaire Patrick Drahi, and private equity giant Warburg Pincus, as well

01:37as various government institutions, energy providers, healthcare systems, hotels, and restaurant chains.

01:44Besides OpenAI, the firm is also working on partnerships with other AI labs to use their

01:49foundational models.

01:51This according to what Gill and CEO Clemens Mewald told Forbes in an interview.

01:57Many companies and industries are clearly overwhelmed by rapid advancements in artificial intelligence,

02:03with a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology paper suggesting that 95% of generative AI pilot

02:09programs had failed among the dozens of companies the researchers surveyed.

02:14Those challenges are fueling a massive boom in revenue for management consultants like Boston

02:19Consulting Group, Accenture, and McKinsey, all of which help organizations learn how to implement

02:24AI.

02:26This is the problem BrainCo aims to solve by developing unique applications for a variety of industries

02:32and providing a central platform that customers can use to interface with AI software.

02:37Gill describes the company's sweet spot as the, quote, gap between the foundational models.

02:43Say GPT-5, the most recent model powering ChatGPT, quote, and what you really need to do.

02:50Its applications use foundation models like OpenAI's, as well as proprietary models and agents

02:56that have been developed in-house and trained to carry out specific tasks.

03:00It helps hotel companies streamline their booking systems, for example, and industrial plants

03:05optimize their energy consumption.

03:08BrainCo doesn't plan on specializing in a particular industry.

03:12Melwald, the firm's CEO who previously led AI product teams at Google Brain and Databricks,

03:17says, quote,

03:18So far, we haven't seen a reason to only double down on one sector.

03:22Actually, it turns out that at the technology level and the AI capability level, a lot of

03:27the use cases look very similar.

03:29The work we do with one customer actually accrues to the work that we do with another in a different

03:34sector.

03:35For example, he explains, there's significant overlap between processing construction permits

03:40and insurance claims.

03:42They require applications that can receive submissions, assess them against a set of rules, building

03:47codes or policy guidelines, and recommend whether to approve them.

03:52BrainCo has worked on both tasks.

03:55Kushner and Gil, BrainCo's initial co-founders, along with Opendoor's Eric Wu, first met in

04:002023 in Silicon Valley after an introduction from Josh Kushner.

04:05At the time, Jared was touring Silicon Valley to discuss AI, and his firm Affinity Partners

04:11was still ramping up its investments, which at the time ranged from a classified ads platform

04:15in Dubai to a German fitness tech startup.

04:19Gil, an early Google employee and now a Forbes Midas list VC who has backed so-called, quote,

04:25Decacorn AI startups like Figma and Perplexity, was a natural first contact.

04:30Decacorn is a term to describe a company that has a valuation of $10 billion or more.

04:35For full coverage, check out Giacomo Tagnini, Monica Hunter Hart, and Ian Martin's piece

04:42on Forbes.com.

04:44This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.

04:47Thanks for tuning in.

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