We rank the top celebrity investors — from the Comeback Kid to Oprah to D.O. Double G — based on the strength of their portfolios.
Fame is currency — at least for the hundreds of movie stars, athletes, influencers, and others who’ve spun their celebrity status into a side hustle as startup investors.
Celebrities can give a much-needed boost in brand recognition to the companies they back. But some celebrity investors stand out from the pack when it comes to picking future unicorns or identifying strong M&A targets.
We used CB Insights data to cut through the hype and see which celebrities-turned-investors are the strongest. To create the Celebrity VC Index, we dug into recent financing and exit activity, unicorn metrics, and portfolio company Mosaic scores — CB Insights’ proprietary algorithm measuring startup health and potential.
Download the full index to dig into the data behind the rankings and see how other celebrities — like Serena Williams and Leonardo DiCaprio — stack up. CB Insights customers can also explore over 1,000 celebrity-backed deals since 2020 using this platform search.
Our analysis includes activity from celebrities’ VC funds as long as they are actively involved in the firm’s decision-making process. We excluded widely known figures in the worlds of tech and business, as well as individuals who came to fame because of their startup investments.
Key takeaways
- Joe Montana and Ashton Kutcher make more investments than any other celebrities — and mint more unicorns. Since 2020, Montana’s Liquid 2 Ventures has invested in a whopping 10 of today’s unicorns — including Airbyte (currently valued at $1.5B), Pipe ($2B), and Whatnot ($3.7B) — before they reached $1B+ valuations. During that time, Kutcher’s Sound Ventures bet on 5 companies that went on to become unicorns.
- The top-performing celebrity investors have made investing into a repeatable business. The top 5 in our ranking have all set up their own VC funds to complement their individual investing activity. Alongside Montana’s Liquid 2 Ventures and Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, these include The Chainsmokers’ MANTIS, Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners, and Kevin Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures.
- Mindy Kaling beats out other top celebrities in terms of her current investments’ Mosaic scores, which have an average score of 883 out of 1,000. CB Insights’ Mosaic score measures emerging startups’ health and growth potential using signals like companies’ commercial traction and their management teams.
- The Chainsmokers and Jay-Z have seen strong exit activity in proportion to their overall deal volume. Among their investments since 2020, each has seen 5 companies exit via M&A or IPO. Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, for instance, backed Oatly in 2020 at a $2B valuation. The oat milk brand then went public in 2021 at a valuation of over $10B, giving Jay-Z a 5x return on investment (if he were to sell his shares).
- Celebrities tend to invest in consumer-facing brands and media-adjacent businesses. That’s not always the case, though, and some have been jumping at the opportunity to invest in enterprise AI. For instance, machine learning development platform Hugging Face, which is valued at $4.5B, counts Kutcher’s Sound Ventures and Kevin Durant among its investors.