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Media mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg is growing his startup investment fund and is bullish on technology, but he doesn’t have any digital media in his venture portfolio.
Katzenberg, who had to deal with the high-profile failure of his short-form entertainment company Quibi three years ago, just raised $460 million for WndrCo, an investment firm he co-founded with a former colleague. Dropbox Sujay Jaswa, financial director;
WndrCo started as a holding company with capital from private investors in 2016. Since then, the company has grown to manage $1.3 billion and has invested in technology companies such as Dapper, Databricks and Gemini. Robin HoodThe company also launched businesses such as digital protection company Aura and Twingate.
Quibi, which Katzenberg founded in 2018, was shut down in 2020 just six months after launch, despite raising $1.75 billion from investors. Disney, Comcast NBCUniversal and AT&T WarnerMedia: The service was expected to gain more than 7 million subscribers within a year, but six months after launch it had just 500,000 subscribers.
Katzenberg previously co-founded DreamWorks and served as chairman of Walt Disney Studios.
Katzenberg, now at WndrCo, has distanced himself from the media market, telling CNBC that the big platforms are the winners. Instead, the company is exploring opportunities in cybersecurity, the future of work and consumer technology.
Jaswa said the goal is to find up to seven venture investments and launch one or two companies each year. Katzenberg joked about how he envisions the portfolio, calling it “the moon and the stars.” In the long run, he said he hopes the companies the firm backs “are not just great investments, but actually make the world a better place.”
WndrCo has invested in low-code platform Airtable and payroll and compliance company Deel.
At Twingate, WndrCo is betting on an alternative to virtual private networks (VPNs), founded by WndrCo partners and backed by Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC. Identity theft prevention company Pango is another cybersecurity business backed and built by WndrCo. Jaswa, who serves as Pango’s chairman, says the reason for these investments is that much of the tech innovation has taken place without guardrails.
“All sorts of amazing things have happened,” Jaswa said, “but nobody has done anything about the other half, which is protecting people online.”
Katzenberg and Jaswa are also waiting for guardrails for artificial intelligence. Katzenberg said technological advances like the internet and now AI come at a price.
“People are worried about what the price of AI is going to be,” Katzenberg said. “We don’t know, so caution is appropriate.”
Still, Jaswa remains optimistic.
“Great advances in technology are often driven by humans not wanting to do what needs to be done,” he said.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
Correction: WndrCo manages $1.3 billion. This figure was incorrectly stated in an earlier version of this article.