Thrive Capital, a New York-based VC firm founded by entrepreneur Joshua Kushner, has just closed its ninth flagship fund with over $5 billion, the firm’s largest to date.
The $5 billion, announced to Thrive’s LP base Sunday, will be split between $1 billion for early-stage investments and $4 billion for growth bets. Thrive managed nearly $15.6 billion at the end of March, according to regulatory documents.
This latest raise is equivalent to the combined total of Thrive’s previous two vehicles.
Thrive’s Fund IX ranks among the largest VC funds raised in 2024, as the fundraising prospects for tier-1 VC firms versus the rest of the industry continue to diverge. LPs have retreated en masse from investing in new venture GPs in light of a desolate exit market, but many continue to pump capital into the most high-profile firms.
Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, Norwest Venture Partners and TCV collectively raised over $15 billion in LP commitments in the first six months of 2024. By comparison, the 127 US VC funds closed by emerging firms in the same time period secured a total of only $8.6 billion, according to the Q2 2024 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor.
Thrive’s latest LP fundraising drive benefited from the firm’s early bets on Stripe and OpenAI, as well as Skims, which is eyeing a 2025 IPO, according to The Information. Thrive also recently expanded its team, hiring ex-Benchmark partner Miles Grimshaw as a general partner in March.
“The technological breakthroughs that will occur over the next years will be unlike anything we have ever experienced before,” Kushner said in a blog post announcing the fund.
