Victoria’s Secret Billionaire Lex Wexner, Who Makes $800 Million From AI

Les Wexner, the billionaire owner of Victoria’s Secret who resigned from his company L Brands in 2020 amid criticism of his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, is profiting from the development of artificial intelligence.

Thanks to a $1 million investment in Atlantic Crypto, a little-known company that would become AI cloud giant Coreweave, the 86-year-old family trust now owns a $720 million stake in one of the most valuable AI startups. The Ohio billionaire is one of the richest people in America, with an estimated net worth of $6.3 billion.

Wexner’s massive stake in the $19 billion startup was revealed in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York in May 2024 by wealth management firm Florence Capital Advisors. The New York-based money manager claims he was entitled to $6.9 million in fees for advising Wexner’s family trust to invest in the startup in 2019.

Coreweave, which provides access to the highly coveted chips used to build AI models, is one of the most highly regarded AI startups to emerge from the AI ​​mainstream. It raised $7.5 billion in debt from Blackstone in May and $1.1 billion in equity earlier this year to build a massive network of data centers that provide the computing power needed to train AI. But in 2019, it was a struggling cryptocurrency miner that had just started subleasing its graphics chips to AI startups out of a New Jersey garage.

Coreweave raised $1.2 million in a seed round in March 2019, according to Pitchbook. Greg Hersch, Wexner’s money manager at Florence Capital, invested $1 million at the time, later buying another $600,000 in shares from the company’s Series A round and doubling it again with an additional convertible note. It was all placed in a trust for the benefit of Wexner’s four children: Sarah, Hannah, David, and Harry.

Now, those investments have turned into a $720 million stake in an artificial intelligence startup that is rumored to be filing an initial public offering next year — and a legal dispute over what appears to be an accidental pileup.

The dispute is a hotbed of financial fraud in New York involving a father and son hired to manage Wexner’s money after Jeffrey Epstein allegedly stole $46 million from family trusts, a separate $100 million stake in Coreweave belonging to a bankrupt hedge fund, allegations of double-dipping and the mysterious disappearance of files containing information about the billionaire’s finances.

Florence Capital denies everything and claims it is owed compensation for its investment advice, which generated an “almost unimaginable return of 30,986%” when Wexner sold $71 million worth of Coreweave shares in November 2023. That sale, combined with Wexner’s estimated remaining stake in Coreweave, brings the total gain on the investment to just under $800 million.

Wexner, Florence Capital and Coreweave did not respond to requests for comment.

Wexner’s investment in Coreweave coincides with a bet on data centers, which are increasingly supporting the wave of artificial intelligence. Since 2019, he has sold more than $450 million of land around his home in New Albany, Ohio, and in neighboring Licking County to tech giants like Google, Meta and Facebook, and Wall Street giants like Blackstone, which have used it to build massive data centers. With more than $15 billion in planned data center investments announced in Franklin and Licking counties over the past year, according to Good Jobs First, a Washington-based corporate subsidy watchdog, Wexner is well-positioned to make similar deals in the future. Through his development company, New Albany Company, he still owns about $850 million worth of farmland in the area, according to Forbes’ estimates.

AND Forbes an investigation published in April revealed Wexner’s key behind-the-scenes role in bringing a $20 billion Intel chip factory to New Albany. The Columbus, Ohio, suburb was able to close the deal with Intel in competition with dozens of other states because the New Albany Company subdivided 1,000 “ready-to-conquer” blocks of farmland into parcels for what Intel hopes will be the world’s largest semiconductor factory. The billionaire is estimated to have made $35 million from the deal. He is in the process of building a 400-acre mixed-use development adjacent to Intel’s headquarters to house his suppliers, and as recently as July 25, he was actively buying up more land.

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