{"id":142278,"date":"2026-08-17T12:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T12:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/142278\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T12:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T12:21:09","slug":"why-lakers-sale-to-joshua-kushner-isnt-an-anti-ai-hedge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/142278\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Lakers Sale to Joshua Kushner Isn’t an Anti-AI Hedge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAn earlier version of this column originally ran in Club Sportico<\/a>, our online newsletter community.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast week\u2019s shocking Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> sale agreement<\/a> has left way more questions than answers, but one thing seems infinitely clear: Sports ownership is rapidly changing.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs franchise valuations continue to climb, leagues like the NBA<\/a> and even the NFL<\/a> are welcoming new types of deal structures from new types of buyers with new types motivations. The pending Lakers sale, under which 41-year-old venture capitalist Joshua Kushner<\/a> would eventually take control of one of America\u2019s most storied franchises, is a shining example.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s no longer just that sports franchise are an asset class (though they are) or that they provide incredible hidden tax benefits (which they do). A new breed of owners are coming, ones who are looking at sports as a save haven against potential AI-driven disruption and upheaval looming for the economy because of the assets in the rest of their portfolio.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tSports team sales tend to reflect what\u2019s happening in the broader economy. During the dot-com boom, many of those newly-minted millionaires found their way to sports (Ted Leonsis, Mark Cuban, Paul Allen, Henry Samueli and John Moores). That gave way to the real estate boom, and those buyers followed (Stephen Ross, Stan Kroenke, Jimmy Haslam, the Lerners, the Wilfs). More recently, it\u2019s been the finance, private equity and hedge fund titans (Josh Harris, Wes Edens, Marc Lasry, Tony Ressler, David Tepper, Tom Gores, the list goes on and on).<\/p>\n

\n\tIf your favorite team was sold in the past decade, you likely welcomed a new owner from this more cutthroat world of deal-making and operational efficiency. And that\u2019s happened most broadly in the NBA, where roughly 20 different teams have been sold since 2010. (Compare that to nine in MLB and seven in the NFL). Those owners have helped the NBA push the envelope in many good ways\u2014in our industry, it\u2019s widely regarded as the most forward-thinking and progressive of the major leagues\u2014but they\u2019ve also arrived with a cost.<\/p>\n

\n\tJust look at the most recent team sales in the NBA, which have been a collection of messy deals, controversy and fairly ruthless operations. Since 2023:<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2013Mat Ishbia bought the Suns\u2014Stock in Ishbia\u2019s mortgage company, UWM, has fallen 80% in the past five years, and with it, Ishbia\u2019s net worth. Some believe it\u2019s\u00a0partially due to a risky wager<\/a>\u00a0that helped fund his NBA dream.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2013Miriam Adelson bought the Mavericks\u2014The casino magnate traded a generational talent and is currently\u00a0at war with<\/a>\u00a0both former owner Mark Cuban and Dallas\u2019 hockey team.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2013Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall bought the Hornets\u2014The team hasn\u2019t been to the playoffs in a decade.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2013Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore bought the Timberwolves\u2014The deal took four years to close, spawned an ugly legal battle, and\u00a0forced the NBA<\/a> to reassess\u00a0what types of sales it allows.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2013Mark Walter<\/a> bought the Lakers\u2014Lost LeBron James before his first full season in charge, then abruptly sold amid multiple federal probes into his business practices.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2013William Chisholm bought the Celtics\u2014Another deal with a creative, stepped financing structure. Chisholm\u2019s group quickly traded away a recent Finals MVP as a cost-cutting move.<\/p>\n

\n\tInto that recent history steps Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared and leader of Thrive, a series of multibillion-dollar investment vehicles that have been early movers in the next shift in the global economy: AI. Thrive\u2019s early bets on OpenAI, SpaceX and Anduril not only proved fabulously lucrative\u2014the group\u2019s $516 million 2022 venture fund, which invested in all three, is now worth about $3.7 billion<\/a>\u2014but they\u2019ve also positioned Kushner in the circles of new-age tech oligarchs like Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey.<\/p>\n

\n\tKushner recently spun out Thrive Holdings and raised $2 billion to help push AI into new industries. OpenAI was part of that raise, meaning Thrive has invested in OpenAI and OpenAI has also backed Thrive. SpaceX recently announced a $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, another AI company already in the Thrive portfolio.<\/p>\n

\n\tThrive\u2019s fingerprints are all over the relatively small number of companies that are rapidly propelling AI forward, moving with more confidence and speed than many people probably want. According to most people who work in that world,\u00a0few Americans are ready<\/a>\u00a0for the tectonic shifts that are coming over the next decade.<\/p>\n

\n\tHaving witnessed those changes up close, Kushner is now looking toward sports. He launched his Thrive Eternal fund earlier this year to back cultural institutions that are likely insulated\u2014if not made even more valuable\u2014from the havoc coming from AI. In April the fund did its first deal, buying a stake of the San Francisco Giants. The Lakers purchase is also coming, at least in part, via Thrive Eternal.<\/p>\n

\n\tHere\u2019s what Kushner\u00a0wrote <\/a>to Thrive\u2019s investors\u00a0about the strategy last week:<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMost of our time is spent thinking about the first-order consequences of AI. What becomes more efficient? What becomes cheaper? What becomes automated? What new products become possible? But there will also be second- and third-order consequences. In a world of abundant intelligence, certain scarce human experiences may matter more. In a world of fragmented distribution, trusted institutions may matter more. In a world where content and software become easier to create, assets rooted in identity, culture, community, history and physical experience may become more valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe letter doesn\u2019t directly mention the Lakers, but that\u2019s what he\u2019s talking about. Kushner believes sports provides an economic opportunity expressly\u00a0because\u00a0it\u2019s relatively insulated by the potential volatility and upheaval that\u2019s coming from the bulk of his portfolio.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf that sounds like a hedge, think again. AI billionaires are already betting on that disruption. As long as the new tech revolution doesn\u2019t herald a mass extinction event\u2014a possibility<\/a>, in Altman\u2019s own words\u2014the backers of the big AI unicorns seem pretty confident that they\u2019ll ride the upheaval to untold riches. And in that scenario, sports teams actually also grow more valuable for their unique attributes. It\u2019s not a hedge; Kushner is doubling down.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe objective is not to buy, optimize and sell,\u201d he wrote about Eternal\u2019s aim. \u201cWe intentionally chose a permanent capital structure because the assets we want to own deserve a time horizon measured in decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere aren\u2019t many Joshua Kushners at the helm of major U.S. sports teams, but that will change in the coming years. OpenAI\u2019s looming trillion-dollar IPO will shower Kushner with additional wealth and mint a new class of AI billionaires. SpaceX, now an AI company, already did that. Anthropic might be close behind.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven the NFL, which has far fewer sales and gatekeeps its ownership ranks way more tightly, will be welcoming an\u00a0AI absolutist<\/a>\u00a0owner later this year. Vinod Khosla<\/a> and Josh Kushner certainly differ in their ideologies, but together they provide a glimpse into the change that\u2019s coming for global sports.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cProfitability is an admission by a company that they have no place to invest that is better than giving the money back to shareholders,\u201d Khosla\u00a0posted on X<\/a>\u00a0earlier this month.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s hard to imagine that quotation coming from any other owner in the\u00a0notoriously\u00a0profitable NFL. Then again, sports franchises and AI startups are very different businesses. And that might be exactly the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An earlier version of this column originally ran in Club Sportico, our online newsletter community. Last week\u2019s shocking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,7601,70191,70192,9426,2485,10446,45792],"class_list":["post-142278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-joshua-kushner","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-mark-walter","tag-nba","tag-nfl","tag-thrive-capital","tag-vinod-khosla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}