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Josh Kushner Valued A24 at $3.5 Billion. Dior and Google Just Proved Him Right.

A $400 million hit in 'Backrooms,' a Google A.I. stake and a two-year Dior deal have made 2026 the year A24's investors got what they paid for.

In the summer of 2024, Josh Kushner put his money behind a movie studio. Thrive Capital, the New York firm he founded, led a funding round that valued A24 at about $3.5 billion, 40 percent more than its valuation two years earlier, and Kushner joined the studio’s board. At the time, Thrive said it saw in A24 a company that combined extraordinary talent and creativity with innovation in its business model and technology.

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It was an unusual bet for Kushner. Thrive made its name backing internet and software companies like Instagram, Spotify and Stripe, and has been an OpenAI investor since 2022, investing more than $1 billion. Like A24’s founders, Kushner has long kept a low profile and let his portfolio do the talking.

Two years later, all three pieces of Kushner’s thesis have shown up at once. The talent came first. Backrooms, the feature Kane Parsons adapted from his own viral YouTube series, opened May 29 to $81 million domestically, the biggest debut in A24’s history. The technology came next. In June, Google put roughly $75 million into the studio through an A.I. research partnership with its DeepMind unit. This month marked the start of a two-year creative partnership with Dior, led by the house’s creative director, Jonathan Anderson. Along the way, A24’s revenue has more than doubled over the past two years, according to the Wall Street Journal.

A24’s co-founders, Daniel........

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