Who Is Josh Kushner? Net Worth, Career, Family and the Record-Breaking LA Lakers Purchase

Josh Kushner just went from “the other Kushner brother” to the co-owner of the most storied franchise in the NBA.

On August 12, 2026, the low-profile venture capitalist and former Disney chief Bob Iger agreed to buy the Los Angeles Lakers at a $12.5 billion valuation, according to multiple reports first cited by ESPN and confirmed by Forbes. That figure doesn’t just make headlines; it rewrites the record book. It’s now the largest sum ever paid for a North American sports franchise, topping Mark Walter’s purchase of the Lakers last year and the $9.6 billion sale of the Seattle Seahawks to Vinod Khosla earlier this year.

For a man who rarely gives interviews and keeps his name out of the tabloids, Kushner just bought his way into one of the biggest sports stories of the year. Here’s who he is, how he built his fortune, and what this deal actually means.

Who Is Josh Kushner?

Joshua Kushner was born on June 12, 1985, in Livingston, New Jersey, into the real estate family behind the Kushner Companies. He’s the youngest son of Charles Kushner and the younger brother of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, a connection that shadows most headlines about him, even though the two brothers have built almost entirely separate careers.

Where Jared moved into real estate and politics, Josh went the other way. He studied government at Harvard College, graduating in 2008, then spent roughly a year in the private equity division of Goldman Sachs working on distressed debt before deciding that wasn’t for him either. He later returned to Harvard Business School for his MBA.

While still an undergraduate, Kushner co-founded Vostu, a Brazilian social gaming company, alongside Mario Schlosser and Daniel Kafie. It wasn’t a runaway hit, but it gave him an early, hands-on education in building tech companies from nothing, an education he put to use almost immediately after.

Building Thrive Capital

In 2009, at just 24 years old, Kushner started Thrive Capital with roughly $5 million in seed money from Joel Cutler, a co-founder of General Catalyst. There was no track record, no big name behind him yet, just a bet that consumer internet companies were about to get very large, very fast.

That bet paid off. Thrive’s early stake in Instagram turned into one of the more famous venture returns of the 2010s when Facebook bought the company in 2012. From there, Thrive kept picking winners: Stripe, Spotify, Slack, Databricks and, more recently, a major position in OpenAI.

The numbers today are hard to overstate:

Kushner also co-founded Oscar Health, the tech-driven health insurance company, in 2013, and later took it public in 2021. He’s stayed on as vice-chairman. Somewhat notably, given his family’s political ties, Oscar Health was built around the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces, not exactly the platform you’d expect from a Trump in-law’s brother.

Not everything Kushner has touched has landed cleanly. Last month, his venture Thrive Eternal was part of a proposed, and quickly abandoned, plan with FIFA to sell private stakes in future World Cup tournaments. The backlash was swift enough that FIFA scrapped it within days. Fordham University law professor Mark Conrad told CNN the Lakers purchase looks a lot like a clean break from that episode, giving Kushner a much bigger, much more flattering story to be known for.

Josh Kushner’s Net Worth

As of August 12, 2026, Forbes puts Kushner’s net worth at approximately $5.2 billion, ranking him around 807th on the global rich list. Almost all of it traces back to his stake in Thrive Capital rather than the family real estate business he chose not to join.

It’s a fortune built the slow way, one fund at a time, over roughly 17 years, rather than inherited outright. Bob Iger, by contrast, is worth an estimated $600 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth, which tells you a lot about how the Lakers price tag was likely split between the two men. Neither side has confirmed the exact breakdown, but given the gap in net worth, most reporting assumes Kushner is carrying the larger share.

The Lakers Deal, Explained

The Lakers were sold by the Buss family to Mark Walter’s group last year at a $10 billion valuation — itself a record at the time. Walter has now agreed to hand controlling ownership to Kushner and Iger at $12.5 billion, calling his brief run as owner “an extraordinary investment” in comments to ESPN.

For context on where that leaves the Lakers among their peers:

This isn’t Kushner’s first rodeo in professional sports ownership. He picked up a 2.5% minority stake in the Memphis Grizzlies back in 2019, sold it in 2024, and used the proceeds to buy into the Miami Heat instead. He also holds a stake in the San Francisco Giants. Those smaller positions look, in hindsight, like a apprenticeship for exactly this kind of deal, a chance to learn how NBA ownership actually works before writing a check this size.

Kushner and Iger described the acquisition to Forbes as being “deeply honored for the opportunity to become stewards of the Los Angeles Lakers.” It’s a franchise with more history than almost any other in American sports, and its new owners now inherit both that legacy and the pressure that comes with it.

Josh Kushner’s Family Life

Kushner married supermodel and entrepreneur Karlie Kloss in a private ceremony in 2018. The couple has three children together and splits time between New York and a $29.5 million Malibu home the pair bought in 2024, a 6,200-square-foot property nicknamed the “Wave House” for its resemblance to the Sydney Opera House.

Beyond investing, Kushner has also dabbled in media, helping revive Life magazine in recent years. But by most accounts, including his own, he’d rather let the portfolio do the talking. In a February 2026 podcast appearance, he summed up his approach simply: “I think Thrive is a very small percentage of its potential. I feel like we’re just getting started.”

Given that he just helped set the record for the most expensive sports franchise sale in American history, it’s hard to argue with him.