Joshua Kushner, founder and managing partner of the venture capital firm Thrive Capital, speaks during the Hill & Valley Forum at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center Auditorium in Washington on April 30, 2025.
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
The San Francisco Giants make it tough for their supporters. And not just with their middling play on the field.
The latest head-scratcher comes with the announcement of the team’s new investment partner, Thrive Eternal, a permanent capital holding company founded by Joshua Kushner. Kushner is the younger brother of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a highly controversial figure. The agreement is subject to MLB approval.
The direct connection to the Trump family in bluest blue San Francisco has set off alarm bells with some Giants fans and employees, who have long been troubled by the actions of the team’s majority owner, Charles B. Johnson. Johnson pours millions of his money into right-wing politics.
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One Giants employee who goes by the Instagram name @leftylea_in_sf posted a video at Oracle Park turning in their uniform, under the headline “I left my job at the San Francisco Giants because Trump’s in-law, Joshua Kushner, is buying a stake in the team.” In a video, they also criticized Johnson and team President and CEO Larry Baer and said, “If you really identify with the SF Giants and you consider it a reflection of your community and a part of you I do think you should care about these things.”
The Kushner connection is startling. The optics aren’t great. But optics can be misleading. In an unexpected twist, Kushner has, at least in the past, been the opposite of Johnson. A look at his political donations reveals that Kushner has donated almost exclusively to Democrats, including Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker and a political action committee called Growth Democrats, to whom he gave $250,000 in 2024. However, he’s not nearly as active as Johnson and hasn’t donated anything in two years, according to federal campaign records. Perhaps family dinners were getting awkward.
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Johnson, whose son, Greg, is the chairman of the Giants and the primary face of the ownership group, is still gushing money into Republican coffers. In the past five quarters he donated $1,338,726, seeming to focus particularly on the Senate race in Alaska where Trump loyalist Dan Sullivan is facing a strong challenge, and in keeping Republicans in control of both the House and Senate.
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Among his many donations in the past year, Johnson contributed to Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.). That’s noteworthy because in 2018 Johnson’s donation to Hyde-Smith came under fire and he asked that it be returned. Johnson said at the time that he wasn’t aware of Hyde-Smith’s comments that she would be in the front row of a “public hanging” if one supporter asked her to come, igniting controversy in Mississippi, with its tragic history of lynchings. She did not apologize. According to records, Hyde-Smith returned Johnson’s donation in 2018.
But apparently he’s back on board with her.
The Giants have long taken the stand that the political activity of Johnson, 93, has no affiliation or relation to the team. But that doesn’t make Giants loyalists feel less queasy about supporting a team whose majority owner represents the polar opposite of what many of them believe. Now they’re supposed to welcome a Kushner.
Beyond optics and political affiliations, the ongoing selling of ownership stakes in the Giants is a more nuanced concern for the fan base. In 2021, Arctos Sports Partners bought an ownership stake. Last year, Sixth Street did. Now, Thrive Eternal. These are companies looking for a return on investment and may not have the same priorities as ownership dedicated to improving the product on the field.
The Giants, according to Forbes’ most recent baseball valuations, rank fifth in the major leagues, valued at $4.05 billion. Forbes places the team’s operating income at $54 million and its revenue at $477 million. According to Forbes, the Giants have been in the top five of valuation since 2014, the last year they won a World Series, and have appreciated more than 300% since then.
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But according to both Sportrac and FanGraphs, the Giants have the 11th highest payroll in the league. And the fans who pour money into the Giants bank account (three beers and a diet soda could cost you close to $100 at Oracle) would love to see those two columns — team valuation and team payroll — be more in alignment. They’d also like to see some of the investment money coming into the Giants invested back in the team, though Baer has indicated in the past that’s not going to happen.
When Sixth Street came on as a partner, Baer told the New York Times, “This is not about a stockpile for the next Aaron Judge. This is about improvements to the ballpark, making big bets on the community around us and having the firepower to take us into the next generation.”
The Giants ownership group has a lot of firepower. They are making a lot of money. They are in the real estate business, the entertainment business and — oh, yeah — the baseball business. When they came in to rescue the team in 1993, Baer and Peter Magowan emphasized that the Giants franchise was a community asset, a community treasure. That the team does not belong to individuals, but to the community and the city.
But, all too often, it feels like the Giants don’t truly reflect their community.