Kushner has teamed up with former Mexican foreign ministers, Prolific Solo Investor Elad Gil and Luis Videgaray to launch Brain Co., a startup aimed at helping large businesses and governments apply AI to their operations.
by Giacomo Tognini, Monica Hunter Heart and Ian MartinForbes staff
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Josh Kushner of Hrive Capital has emerged as one of the most active investors in artificial intelligence, placing $1 billion bets on startups like Openai, Databricks and Anduril. Now, his brother, and son-in-law of President Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, is taking part in the act by co-founding his own AI startup.
Kushner is working with former Mexican foreign ministers Tech Investor Elad Gil and Luis Videgaray to help large businesses and governments use AI to improve their businesses. The company announced Wednesday it raised $30 million in a Series A funding round led by Kushner private equity firms Affinity Partners and Gil's Gil Capital. It is also backed by billionaire angel investors such as Coinbase CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong, Stripe Cofounder, CEO Patrick Collison, LinkedIn Cofounder Reid Hoffman and Palo Alto Networks Chairman and CEO Nikesh Arora.
Founded in 2024, the company has a strategic partnership with OpenAI with around 40 employees, including 10 of the world's largest public companies. Forbes'Global 2000 List. The San Francisco-based startup has already won deals with companies such as Auction House Sotheby's (owned by billionaire Patrick Drahi), private equity giant Warburg Pincus, and various government agencies, energy providers, healthcare systems, hotels and restaurant chains. In addition to Openai, the company is working on partnerships with other AI Labs to use the basic model, GIL and CEO Clemens Mewald said Forbes In an interview.
Many businesses and industries are clearly overwhelmed by the rapid advances in artificial intelligence. A recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology paper suggests that 95% of generative AI pilot programs failed among the dozens of companies researched by researchers. These challenges have driven a massive boom in revenue for management consultants such as Boston Consulting Group, Accenture, and McKinsey. All of these help organizations learn how to implement AI.
This is intended to be solved by Brain Co. developing unique applications for a variety of industries and providing a central platform that customers can use to interface with AI software. Gill describes the company's sweet spot as “and really needs to do” such as the “foundation model gap,” the GPT-5 powered by the latest model, the ChatGPT. The application uses basic models like Openai, as well as unique models and agents developed in-house and trained to perform specific tasks. For example, it helps hotel companies streamline booking systems and industrial factories optimize energy consumption.
Brain Co. has no plans to specialize in any particular industry. “So far, we haven't seen a reason to double one sector. In fact, at the technology and AI capabilities level, many use cases seem very similar.” “The work done with one customer actually depends on working with another customer in another sector.”
For example, he explains that there is a significant overlap between the process of construction permits and insurance claims. You will need applications that can receive submissions and recommend that you evaluate them against a set of rules (building codes or policy guidelines) and approve them. Brain Co. has been working on both tasks.
Kushner and Gil-Brain Co.'s first co-founder, Opendoor's Eric Wu, met in 2023 in Silicon Valley after an introduction from Josh Kushner. At the time, Jared was touring Silicon Valley to discuss AI and his company's affinity partners, but that investment was still rising. At the time it ranged from Dubai's classified advertising platform to German fitness technology startups. Gil, early Google employees, and now a Forbes Midas List VC, which helped “decacone” AI startups like Figma and confusion, was a natural first contact.
The Brain Co. idea came from a coffee conference held in San Francisco between Kushner, Gil and Videgaray in February 2024. (Kushner and VideoGalley met for the first time in Trump's 2016 presidential election, which led to the protests in Mexico and the resignation of VideoGalley. He was rehired after Trump's victory and worked with Kushner in the first Trump administration.
“We live through a one-generation platform shift,” Kushner said in a press release. “After talking to Elad, I realized that we can bridge the gap between Silicon Valley's finest AI talent and the world's most important institutions.”
They then adopted personal grab bags for high-tech and politics as a whole, using Wu as co-founder and chairman, and Mewald as CEO. In September 2024, Brain Co. acquired Serene AI, a mental health AI companion. This introduced three Serene co-founders: Dan Ashton, Mircea Pașoi and Revant Kapoor. This helped develop the application as an additional co-founder, as they were all collaborating on the audio-based social media app Clubhouse. Charlton Boyd and Nick Butterfield, two former Trump administration members who joined Kushner's affinity, are helping Brain Co. develop their first partnership. Kushner basically acts as a highly involved board member, Gil says.
Kushner founded Affinity in 2021 after quitting his White House role as an advisor to his father-in-law, President Donald Trump. The private equity fund has gained significant support from sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, managing more than $4.8 billion in assets in accordance with the latest financial disclosures. Gil said Affinity will venture into AI Forbes He and Kushner began to encourage each other to invest.
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