(José Niño, Headline USA) Few venture funds triple investor money inside two years. Donald Trump Jr. helps run one that did.
The flagship fund at 1789 Capital returned roughly 200 percent as of June 30, The New York Times reported. Competing firms founded in 2023 averaged about 21 percent, PitchBook data shows. Assets climbed from a few hundred million dollars two years ago past $3 billion today. Trump Jr. announced he was joining the firm within days of his father’s 2024 victory.
The money went into SpaceX, Anduril, Cerebras, and Reflection AI, each bought before it reached public markets, the Times reported. Those bets cluster in defense, space, and critical minerals, the industries this White House has pushed to pull back from China.
Polymarket shows how steep the climb can get. Federal rules blocked the prediction market from taking money from American bettors until a regulator licensed it last year. The Times reported a $300 million valuation when 1789 bought in. Today the figure reads $15 billion.
Trump Jr. and cofounder Omeed Malik reject any suggestion that proximity explains the results. Conversations with his father happen only “every few weeks,” the president’s son told the Times, business never enters them, and he claims “no policy position and no role within the administration whatsoever.” Malik points out that he has never “set foot in the White House.”
Angela Lee, who teaches venture capital at Columbia Business School, told the Times that no group of first time managers in her memory has raised this kind of money. “Any way you cut it, it’s unprecedented,” she said, before floating a theory. “People are paying for proximity to power.”
Congress has taken an interest in one holding. 1789 backed Vulcan Elements last fall, when the rare earth magnet manufacturer sat near a $200 million valuation. A $620 million Defense Department loan commitment followed within months, lifting the company toward $2 billion. Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee are still digging. Malik traced his knowledge of the loan to a company news release, and Trump Jr. said nobody at Vulcan has ever spoken with him.
“It’s not like it takes a genius to figure this out,” he told the Times. “I don’t have inside information.”
Rules governing presidential relatives barely exist, Jessica Tillipman of George Washington University told the Times, leaving norms to fill the gap. “A lot of this is based on norms,” she said.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino