Thrive Bets on Sports With San Francisco Giants Stake - WSJ

April 25, 2026

```json { "title": "Thrive Capital Bets on SF Giants With Thrive Eternal", "metaDescription": "Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital launches Thrive Eternal, a permanent capital firm, with its first investment: an ownership stake in the San Francisco Giants.", "content": "<h2>Thrive Capital's Joshua Kushner Launches Thrive Eternal, Takes Ownership Stake in San Francisco Giants</h2>Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital announced on April 24, 2026, the launch of a new permanent capital holding company called Thrive Eternal, with its inaugural investment being an agreed-upon ownership stake in the San Francisco Giants MLB franchise. The deal, which is still subject to MLB approval, marks a deliberate strategic pivot for one of venture capital's most prominent firms — away from purely software-driven bets and toward what Kushner describes as assets that technology cannot replicate.The announcement positions Thrive Eternal as a fundamentally different vehicle from traditional private equity. Unlike institutional investors who typically enter with a fixed exit timeline, Thrive Eternal is structured to hold assets over many decades, with no predetermined exit date. Its initial limited partners are existing Thrive Capital investors, and the firm intends to raise new capital over time without the constraints of a conventional fund cycle.<h2>What Is Thrive Eternal — and Why the Giants?</h2>Thrive Eternal describes itself on its official website as "a permanent capital holding company that will be concentrated in a small number of assets that we can own and steward over many decades." The thesis behind the vehicle is explicit: iconic franchises and cultural institutions benefit from long-term stewardship, compound through cultural resonance, and are enhanced by technology rather than displaced by it.This framing is notable coming from a firm that has spent over a decade backing some of the most transformative software companies in the world. Thrive Capital, founded by Kushner in 2009, has raised a total of $22.3 billion and currently manages over $50 billion in assets. Its portfolio includes early investments in Instagram, GitHub, Spotify, Stripe, and OpenAI. In 2022 alone, the firm invested $130 million in OpenAI at a $29 billion valuation — described at the time as the only term sheet the organization received. Earlier in 2026, Thrive raised more than $10 billion for its largest fund ever.The decision to plant Thrive Eternal's flag in baseball, rather than another technology company, is a pointed one. According to Bloomberg, the push behind Thrive Eternal is to back "assets with qualities that cannot be replicated by technology" — a framing that reflects a broader anxiety across the investment community about artificial intelligence's capacity to commoditize software-based businesses.Kushner addressed the significance of the Giants specifically in a statement on the Thrive Eternal website and via social media: "Our first partnership is expected to be with the San Francisco Giants — an institution built on more than a century of shared identity and community, and among the most iconic sports franchises in America."He added: "We have reached an agreement, subject to league approval, to acquire an ownership stake. We feel privileged by the opportunity to be long-term partners to the Giants."The Giants responded warmly. In an official team statement, the franchise confirmed: "We have reached an agreement for Thrive Eternal to join our investor group, subject to MLB approval." The team added: "We are thrilled with the prospect of Eternal becoming a long-term partner."The specific size of Thrive Eternal's stake and the financial terms of the deal have not been publicly disclosed. The Giants declined to comment on the specific terms of the deal, according to Sports Business Journal.<h2>A Franchise Worth $4 Billion — and Increasingly Open to Institutional Capital</h2>The San Francisco Giants are currently valued at approximately $4 billion by Forbes, making them the fifth most valuable franchise in Major League Baseball. The team's ownership group has expanded significantly in recent years, growing from 18 investors when the club was purchased in 1993 to 35 principal partners today, with the addition of Sixth Street Partners and now Thrive Eternal.The Giants' openness to institutional investment is a relatively recent development, made possible by a landmark rule change at the league level. In 2019, Major League Baseball became the first American professional sports league to allow private equity firms to acquire ownership stakes in its teams, permitting purchases of up to 30% of a franchise. That structural shift opened the door to a new class of investors — and the Giants have been among the most active in welcoming them.The team's first private equity investment came in 2021, when Arctos Sports Partners acquired a stake. In 2025, Sixth Street Partners purchased a reported 10% stake in the Giants, with proceeds directed toward renovating Oracle Park, the Mission Rock real estate development adjacent to the stadium, and the team's Arizona training facilities. Giants CEO Larry Baer described that Sixth Street transaction as "the first significant investment in three decades."The Thrive Eternal deal would represent the second major institutional investment in consecutive years, signaling that the Giants' ownership group under chairman Greg Johnson is actively pursuing capital partners willing to engage on a long-term basis — a philosophy that aligns directly with Thrive Eternal's permanent capital structure.<h2>The AI-Proof Investment Thesis — and What It Signals for the Industry</h2>The intellectual framework behind Thrive Eternal deserves scrutiny, because it says something meaningful about where a top-tier technology investor sees risk in the current moment. Kushner is not abandoning technology — Thrive Capital continues to manage over $50 billion in assets across software and internet investments, and its 2026 fund raise of more than $10 billion demonstrates continued confidence in tech-driven returns. But the creation of a separate, permanent vehicle explicitly designed to hold assets that "cannot be replicated by technology" suggests that even the most bullish technology investors are hedging against AI-driven disruption of traditional software business models.Sports franchises, and particularly storied ones like the Giants, occupy a peculiar position in this landscape. Their value is rooted in scarcity — there are a fixed number of MLB franchises — and in community identity that has compounded over more than a century. These are not characteristics that a large language model or an AI-native competitor can reproduce. In that sense, the Giants represent exactly the kind of asset Thrive Eternal is designed to hold: one whose moat is cultural and historical rather than technological.The broader trend toward institutional investment in sports franchises is also worth noting. MLB's 2019 rule change was followed by similar shifts in the NBA and NFL, and private equity capital has flowed steadily into professional sports ownership groups across all major leagues. For firms like Thrive, the appeal is clear: sports franchises offer long-duration, appreciating assets with strong brand equity, limited correlation to public markets, and, as the Giants' recent Oracle Park renovations illustrate, real estate development upside tied to stadium infrastructure.Thrive Eternal's permanent capital structure — with no set exit timeline and the ability to raise new capital continuously — is particularly well-suited to this kind of asset. Traditional private equity funds operate on fixed 10-year cycles, which can create pressure to sell at suboptimal times. A holding company with no mandatory exit is structurally aligned with the long-duration nature of sports franchise ownership in a way that conventional funds are not.<h2>What Happens Next</h2>The Thrive Eternal investment in the Giants remains subject to MLB approval, which is standard for any ownership stake transaction in the league. The Giants have confirmed the agreement, and both parties have expressed enthusiasm for the partnership, but the deal is not formally complete until the league signs off.Once approved, Thrive Eternal will join a Giants ownership group that now includes Arctos Sports Partners and Sixth Street Partners as institutional investors alongside the club's original partners. Whether Thrive Eternal pursues additional investments beyond the Giants — in other sports franchises, cultural institutions, or comparable long-duration assets — has not been announced. The Thrive Eternal website describes the firm as intending to be "concentrated in a small number of assets," suggesting selectivity rather than a broad acquisition strategy.For the Giants specifically, continued institutional investment raises questions about the long-term direction of the franchise's capital allocation — including whether future investment tranches will continue to fund infrastructure projects like Oracle Park and Mission Rock, or extend into other areas of franchise development. Those details remain undisclosed.For more tech news, visit our <a href=\"/news\">news section</a>.<h2>The Bigger Picture for Investors Watching AI's Impact on Asset Classes</h2>The launch of Thrive Eternal is a data point worth tracking for anyone paying attention to how AI is reshaping investment strategy — not just within technology, but across asset classes. When one of the most successful venture capital firms of the past decade creates a new vehicle explicitly premised on owning things AI cannot replicate, it reflects a genuine reckoning with the long-term implications of the technology being backed by the parent firm's core funds.Whether Thrive Eternal's thesis proves prescient — that iconic franchises and cultural institutions will hold their value in an AI-saturated world in ways that software businesses may not — remains to be seen. But the structural logic is coherent, and the Giants, valued at approximately $4 billion and carrying more than a century of community identity, are a credible first expression of that thesis.The Thrive Eternal stake in the San Francisco Giants is pending MLB approval. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.", "excerpt": "Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital has launched Thrive Eternal, a new permanent capital holding company, with its first investment being an ownership stake in the San Francisco Giants, announced April 24, 2026. The deal, still pending MLB approval, reflects a deliberate thesis: backing iconic assets that artificial intelligence cannot replicate. Thrive Capital manages over $50 billion and raised more than $10 billion in its largest-ever fund earlier in 2026.", "keywords": ["Thrive Capital", "Thrive Eternal", "San Francisco Giants", "Joshua Kushner", "private equity sports investment"], "slug": "thrive-capital-thrive-eternal-san-francisco-giants-investment" } ```

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