(Bloomberg) -- Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners raised an additional $1.5 billion from the Qatar Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi-based asset manager Lunate, and extended the investment period of its debut fund to 2029.
“We preemptively tried to avoid any conflicts, so we don’t have to raise capital for the next four years,” Kushner said on a podcast episode of Invest Like The Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy, co-founder of venture capital firm Positive Sum, released Friday.
Kushner said he spoke to investors about potentially raising additional capital in February and closed on the funds before the election. Investors liked that the Miami-based firm, founded in 2021, “went slow” during its first two years so adding two more to its investment horizon was “easy for them to do,” he added.
Affinity’s investors agreed to the extension and the new commitments “irrespective of what the outcome was,” Kushner said, referencing the US presidential election, which his father-in-law, Donald Trump, won last month.
“I made very clear to them that in the event that Trump was elected, that they should not expect anything from me,” Kushner said, adding Affinity’s investors initially committed in 2021 when Trump’s political future was unclear.
During Trump’s first term in the White House, Kushner was a senior adviser and helped broker the Abraham Accords, a bilateral agreement signed in 2020 between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, as well as between Israel and Bahrain.
His father, Charles Kushner, was pardoned of federal charges by Trump during his first presidential term and will be nominated as the incoming ambassador to France, Trump said last month.
On Friday’s episode, the younger Kushner acknowledged an October letter written by Democratic lawmakers requesting an investigation into whether he was functioning as an unregistered foreign agent for Saudi Arabia, whose Public Investment Fund is an investor in Affinity.
“My sense there is that these are not serious efforts, we’ve complied with all the laws and rules and will continue to do so,” Kushner said. “There’s nothing that they’ve even raised that we have any concern about.”
He said Affinity is running a legitimate business and is regulated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. After the SEC conducted its first examination of Affinity, the investment firm received a so-called “no-action” letter from the agency, he said, meaning the SEC found no issues during its exam.
Track Record
The additional $1.5 billion from the QIA and Lunate, two existing investors, brings Affinity’s assets under management to $4.6 billion. Affinity has committed more than $2 billion of that total and has made some bets that are currently, on paper, profitable.
Affinity agreed to invest in technology consulting company QXO Inc. in July at $9.14 a share, a price that has since risen to $16.12 as of Thursday’s close. Shares of Tel Aviv-based Phoenix Financial Ltd. have gained about 34% since Affinity first agreed to invest earlier this year. Additionally, the valuation of fitness technology startup EGym, which in July 2023 marked Affinity’s first European investment, eclipsed $1 billion in September.
Affinity has also backed Brazilian fast-food operator Zamp SA and Dubai-based classifieds platform Dubizzle Group.
Kushner said Affinity has a strong deal pipeline and will invest according to its values and follow all laws and rules in coming years, including during Trump’s next presidential tenure, which starts in January.
Saudi’s PIF, Qatar’s QIA and Abu Dhabi’s Lunate, which manages about $105 billion in assets, are Affinity’s three largest limited partners, Kushner said on the podcast. Terry Gou, the founder of Foxconn, is also an investor in the firm, as is Kushner himself.
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