The SPVs Behind Venture Capital’s Biggest Bets

You might have noticed that Thrive Capital has made a number of bold bets this year, leading massive investments in Stripe, Ramp and OpenAI once again, even as other late-stage investors have pulled back. Special-purpose vehicles helped buttress the firm’s Stripe investment, while lowering the risk of its core fund’s performance. The same could be true of its OpenAI investment.

Last week, I reported that Thrive Capital is leading a deal to buy OpenAI shares through a tender offer that would value the company at more than $80 billion. The Josh Kushner–run venture capital firm could raise supplemental cash for the deal through an SPV, which allows investors to raise money for a specific deal.

That would mean Thrive’s $2.5 billion growth fund alone wouldn’t be responsible for a big chunk of the reported $1 billion OpenAI shareholders plan to sell as part of the tender, or the additional billions OpenAI is likely to raise on top of that through a sale of new shares. Thrive has cash to invest: It added $300 million from the California Public Employees' Retirement System to its fund just last month. Still, Thrive could take the SPV route to avoid overweighting its growth fund with OpenAI shares. Plus, as a bonus, Thrive would likely get carry—a percent of a fund’s profits—from the SPV, independent of how its core fund performs.