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Thrive Capital reportedly raised $5 billion for its biggest-ever pair of venture capital funds.
The fundraising is a sign that the artificial intelligence boom is reviving investor enthusiasm, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday (Aug. 5).
Thrive told its investors Sunday (Aug. 4) that it received commitments for the full amount, which marks its largest-ever fundraising and is among the biggest completed this year by a venture capital firm, according to the report.
“The technological breakthroughs that will occur over the next years will be unlike anything we have ever experienced before,” Thrive founder Josh Kushner wrote in a letter to announce the funds to Thrive’s investors, per the report.
Thrive has enjoyed greater prominence in tech startup circles due to its ties to OpenAI, in which it has invested hundreds of millions, the report said.
The news follows reports from January that Thrive was planning the fund, with one investor saying at the time that the effort would present “a very interesting litmus test” for other investors in a market in which investing had fallen dramatically.
Since then, American VC funding hit its highest quarterly total in two years in July, to the tune of $55.6 billion. The figure marks a 47% increase over the $37.8 billion startups in the U.S. brought in during the prior quarter, fueled largely by investments in AI firms, such as the $6 billion raised by Elon Musk’s xAI and $7.5 billion raised by CoreWeave.
In other AI news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the rise of the technology in the wearables market, in the form of the “friend” pendant, a $99 AI-powered necklace set to launch next year. The “always-listening pendant” responds to voice prompts with text messages and joins an increasing number of AI-powered wearable and handheld devices jockeying for a place in consumers’ daily lives.
“The concept is like all other smart wearables, AI-powered or not. It’s an imperfect solution,” Marty Meany, editor of tech review website Goosed.ie and a regular user of Meta’s AI-powered Ray-Ban sunglasses, told PYMNTS.
He pointed to potential design flaws in the pendant.
“I can already see the issue here, likely being that the necklace looks like something MC Hammer would wear,” he said. “It will probably end up being worn under your shirt/blouse — so what happens when it almost certainly overheats?”
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