Josh Kushner's Thrive Capital Strikes Gold in GitHub Deal

(Bloomberg) -- Add Josh Kushner to the shortlist of major winners in Microsoft Corp.’s $7.5 billion purchase of GitHub Inc.

Kushner’s New York-based venture fund, Thrive Capital, had invested about $150 million for a roughly 9 percent stake in the online platform for developers to share and work together on software code, according to a person familiar with the deal. It was both the firm’s largest investment and biggest return since Kushner founded Thrive a decade ago, the person said. Axios earlier reported Thrive’s involvement in the deal.

Thrive is in good company. Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, two of Silicon Valley’s most storied and successful venture firms, also scored in the GitHub sale. Andreessen invested around $100 million in 2012 and Sequoia led a $250 million round three years later.

Thrive has been expanding in recent years, raising successively bigger funds and getting into deals for top-tier startups like Jet.com Inc., Spotify Technology SA and Warby Parker Retail Inc. Kushner, 32, has also co-founded and invested in health insurance startup Oscar Health Agency and real estate investment platform Cadre.

GitHub is one of several enterprise software startups Thrive has backed, including Slack Technologies Inc., Stripe Inc. and MapBox Inc.

Josh Kushner is the brother of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and senior adviser of U.S. President Donald Trump.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gerrit De Vynck in New York at gdevynck@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz, Andrew Pollack

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