President Donald Trump's son-in-law and former White House advisor Jared Kushner has entered the artificial intelligence sector with Brain Co., a startup that announced on Sept. 11 that it raised $30 million in Series A funding to help governments and large enterprises adopt AI in practical ways.
Kushner Partners with Elad Gil and Luis Videgaray to Launch Brain Co.
Kushner co-founded Brain Co. alongside tech investor Elad Gil and former Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, forming a leadership team that blends politics, technology, and finance.
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The funding round was led by Kushner's private-equity firm Affinity Partners and Gil's Gil Capital, while attracting support from Silicon Valley billionaires including Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) CEO Brian Armstrong, Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and Perplexity AI co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas.
Brain Co. also announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI, enabling the company to build applications tailored for large-scale organizations.
Early Customers Include Sotheby's and Warburg Pincus
The San Francisco-based company employs about 40 people and already works with 10 firms listed on the Forbes Global 2000, including auction house Sotheby's and private- equity giant Warburg Pincus, according to Forbes.
Brain Co.'s customer base also spans governments, healthcare systems, energy providers, hotels, and restaurant chains, illustrating a broad strategy to apply AI tools across industries.
Brain Co. CEO Clemens Mewald, who previously led AI product teams at Google Brain and Databricks, said the company does not intend to specialize in a single sector. "So far, we haven't seen a reason to only double down on one sector," he told Forbes. "Actually, it turns out that at the technology level and the AI capability level, a lot of the use cases look very similar."
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Building AI Bridges Between Models and Institutions
Brain Co. aims to create applications that sit between foundational AI models and the operational needs of institutions. "We're living through a once-in-a-generation platform shift," Kushner said in the statement. "After speaking with Elad, we realized we could build a bridge between Silicon Valley's best AI talent and the world's most important institutions to drive global impact."
The startup has already developed tools that help hotels streamline bookings, enable governments to process construction permits, and assist insurers in managing claims more efficiently.
Brain Co. acquired Serene AI in September 2024, a mental health AI companion app, bringing its co-founders Dan Ashton, Mircea Pașoi, and Revant Kapoor into the leadership team as additional co-founders, Forbes reported.
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Kushner's Affinity Partners Expands Into AI
Kushner founded Affinity Partners in 2021 after leaving the White House. The fund manages more than $4.8 billion in assets, primarily from sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, according to Forbes.
Brain Co. emerged after Kushner toured Silicon Valley in 2023 to explore AI opportunities. Introduced to Gil by his brother Josh Kushner, who runs Thrive Capital and has invested billions into OpenAI, Databricks, and Anduril, Kushner saw a chance to establish his own AI venture.
The company's strategy to bridge the gap between AI research labs and real-world operations reflects both Kushner's investment ambitions and Gil's deep experience with companies like Figma (NYSE:FIG) and Perplexity, which he backed as an early investor, according to Forbes.
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