It is not a crypto-native fund, yet it is becoming one of the most prominent funds behind Polymarket's financing.
Written by: Ma He, Foresight News
On September 1, The Wall Street Journal reported citing informed sources that 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of Donald Trump, serves as a partner, plans to make an additional investment of approximately $300 million in prediction market platform Polymarket, with the total size of this financing round reaching about $1 billion.
The relationship between 1789 Capital and Polymarket did not start this week.
In August 2025, Polymarket announced that it had received a strategic investment from 1789 Capital, and at the same time invited Donald Trump Jr. to join its advisory board. Reuters cited informed sources on the same day as saying that the investment amount was in the tens of millions of dollars.
From $100 Million to $3.5 Billion
In the name 1789 Capital, the year 1789 marks the passage of the U.S. Bill of Rights. The fund is headquartered in Palm Beach, Florida, with the slogan "Providing capital to unlock the next chapter of American exceptionalism". It is not a crypto-native fund, yet it is becoming one of the most prominent political capitals behind Polymarket's financing.
1789 Capital was founded in October 2022 by three individuals: investment banker Omeed Malik, conservative publisher and investor Chris Buskirk, and Republican mega-donor Rebekah Mercer.
The idea for the fund originated from a gathering of Rockbridge, a donor network that Buskirk and current Vice President JD Vance have participated in. Early roadshow materials outlined three strategies: copy/parallel economy, deglobalization, and industries harmed by ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) principles. They created an opposing label EIG (Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Growth), and Malik's original words were: "We do not invest in any company with ESG or DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) components."
The backgrounds of the three individuals define the fund's ethos, which is unlike traditional Silicon Valley institutions.
Omeed Malik
Malik served as the head of Bank of America Merrill Lynch's global hedge fund advisory business. After leaving in 2018, he had a lawsuit with the bank and reached a settlement with an eight-figure amount. In 2019, he founded boutique investment bank Farvahar Partners. He once donated to Hillary Clinton, later switched to supporting Trump, and became a member of Mar-a-Lago. In 2025, he was also appointed to the board of directors of Fannie Mae.
Chris Buskirk
Buskirk is also a founder and chief investment officer of the fund. According to the official website, he is the founder and head of the family investment firm Buskirk Capital; it was this company that promoted the establishment of 1789 Capital.
Don Trump Jr., eldest son of Donald Trump, is on the left
Donald Trump Jr. joined the fund as a partner less than a week after the November 2024 election. His personal relationship with Malik started earlier: they met in the Hamptons in 2018 through Kimberly Guilfoyle, and had already discussed investments together around 2020. The New York Times reported that both moved their homes to Palm Beach successively due to dissatisfaction with regulations during the pandemic. According to the official website, Donald Trump Jr.'s work focuses on developing new investment projects, fundraising, and strategy. His extensive network in the business and investor circles provides considerable reach for 1789 Capital's global network.
What truly turned 1789 Capital from a small fund into a market topic is its scale. The publicly reported trajectory of assets under management is: the initial fundraising target was about $100 million, reaching around $100 million by the end of 2023. When Trump won the election and Donald Trump Jr. joined, it was about $150-200 million. In May 2026, The Financial Times quoted partner Paul Abrahimzadeh as saying that it had increased from $200 million to about $3.5 billion in the past year. In terms of performance, in July 2026, The New York Times cited informed sources as saying that the main fund's return as of June 30 was about 200%!.
Investing in Mid-to-Late Stage Growth Stocks: Defense and AI as Core Holdings
1789 Capital is not a seed fund. According to PitchBook, it has made more than 40 investments, expanding its portfolio from 5 companies in the early days to about 40. Abrahimzadeh stated the strategy straightforwardly in public interviews: buy industry leaders, preferably those that can exit in another year or two; occasionally invest in early-stage companies, but the main holdings are growth stocks.
There are four identifiable heavyweight investment directions.
One category is defense and reindustrialization: Anduril, Hadrian, Firehawk Aerospace, Axiom Space, and rare earth magnet company Vulcan Elements. CNN reported in July 2026 that 1789 Capital has accumulated investments in more than 10 defense, aerospace, and underlying software companies.
Another category is the Musk ecosystem. The fund's partners have publicly stated that SpaceX is one of the largest holdings in the portfolio; xAI, X, and Neuralink are also on the reported holding list.
The third category is AI computing power and models. Cerebras is the most clear-cut realization: 1789 Capital entered at a valuation of about $8 billion, then increased its position at a valuation of about $23 billion. The company went public on Nasdaq in May 2026, becoming one of the largest IPOs of that year. Others include Groq, Reflection AI, PsiQuantum, Perplexity, Replit, Skild AI, etc. On the software side, there are Databricks, Ramp, Deel, Plaid—the logic is the application layer that is "strengthened by AI rather than replaced by it."
The fourth category is their initial cultural business: the first investment in 2023 was Tucker Carlson's Last Country; Juul and gun e-commerce GrabAGun are also on the list. However, what really accelerated the fundraising speed were assets that institutions also compete for, such as SpaceX, Cerebras, and Anduril, plus the last name of the president's eldest son.
From Casino to Financial Infrastructure
1789 Capital has bet on the prediction market, and Donald Trump Jr. himself has talked about the reason for entering.
At the 2024 Republican National Convention, he walked directly to Coplan, the then 26-year-old founder of Polymarket, and said that Polymarket's odds were closer to the voices he heard from voters than polls. Just two years earlier, Polymarket was fined $1.4 million by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and ordered to block U.S. users.
In August 2025, Donald Trump Jr. described the platform in a press release as a tool that "bypasses media rhetoric and expert opinions, allowing people to bet based on real judgments" and emphasized that "America needs access to this platform." For a fund that labels itself as anti-ESG and anti-"weaponized capital", the prediction market is packaged as a right to information rather than a right to gambling.
1789 Capital has invested in Tucker Carlson's Last Country, Musk's X, and then Polymarket. The fund is building a complete "anti-establishment decentralized information loop": X provides the public opinion field, Carlson outputs opinions, and Polymarket provides real betting odds to crush the polls of traditional mainstream media.
When powerful capital is deeply tied to a prediction platform, the platform turns from a decentralized oracle into a suspect place for insider manipulation. Once there is a regime change in Washington or the partisan game escalates, Polymarket will directly become the number one target of congressional anti-monopoly and anti-insider trading investigations.
In any case, the prediction market is no longer just a casino in the crypto circle. The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange and the fund where the president's eldest son is located are using real money to turn it into an alternative financial infrastructure in the United States.