Hot indie studio A24 scores $3.5bn valuation after Josh Kushner infusion

A24, the indie movie studio behind the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All At Once and Civil War, has received a cash injection led by Josh Kushner’s Thrive Entertainment that values the company at $3.5bn.

The $100mn investment marks a 40 per cent rise in A24’s value since its first fundraising in 2022 — a vote of confidence in the swaggering indie at a moment when mainstream Hollywood studios are struggling with a weak box office and production delays due to last year’s strikes.

But while its larger competitors are retrenching after investing billions on streaming services, A24 is making bigger bets. This year it had success with Alex Garland’s Civil War, which cost $50mn to make — its most expensive film to date — and grossed more than $115mn at the box office. 

Kushner’s Thrive Capital has been an early investor in companies, including SpaceX, Instagram and Spotify. He will join the A24 board. Investors from the earlier round, which included Stripes LLC, Neuberger Berman and Eldridge, also participated in the latest fundraising.

“In A24, we see a company bringing extraordinary talent and creativity together with business model and technology innovation to reinvent entertainment for the modern age,” Kushner, brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared, said in a statement.     

Upcoming films include Spike Lee’s remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low starring Denzel Washington, The Smashing Machine featuring Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson, and Babygirl with Nicole Kidman in the lead. It also has secured the film rights to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk.

The company was founded in 2012 in New York by Daniel Katz, a former partner at Guggenheim Partners, and David Fenkel, who had co-founded the Oscilloscope Laboratories studio with the late Beastie Boy Adam Yauch. 

The studio made its first splash with Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring and Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, which it promoted through clever social media posts instead of expensive marketing campaigns used by the major studios.  

Later it received critical acclaim — and Oscar nominations — with Moonlight, Lady Bird and Ex Machina. In 2022 it won the Oscar for Best Picture with Everything Everywhere.

The company has also built a library of more than 50 TV series, including Euphoria, Beef and The Sympathizer.