Hollywood’s Jeffrey Katzenberg bets on cybersecurity, avoids digital media as he seeks out startups

Jeffrey Katzenberg, a media mogul, is bullish on technology as he raises funds for startup investments. He does, however, steer clear of digital media in his venture portfolio.

Katzenberg, who faced a high-profile failure of short-form entertainment company Quibi three years ago, has recently raised $460 million for investment firm WndrCo, founded with former Dropbox finance chief Sujay Jaswa.

WndrCo began as a holding company in 2016 with funds from private investors. The firm currently manages $1.3 billion and invests in technology companies such as Dapper, Databricks, Gemini, and Robinhood. The company has also established businesses such as Aura and Twingate, both of which provide digital protection.

Quibi, founded by Katzenberg in 2018, shut down in 2020 after raising $1.75 billion from investors such as Disney, Comcast’s NBCUniversal, and AT&T’s WarnerMedia. Six months after its launch, the service had only 500,000 subscribers, despite projections that it would have over 7 million within a year.

Katzenberg previously co-founded DreamWorks and served as chairman of Walt Disney Studios.

Now at WndrCo, Katzenberg is avoiding the media market, telling CNBC that the major platforms are the winners. Rather, the firm is looking for opportunities in cybersecurity, the future of work, and consumer technology.

Jaswa stated that the goal is to find up to seven venture investments and launch one or two companies per year. Katzenberg joked about his own portfolio ideas: “the moon, the stars,” he said. Longer term, he hopes the companies the firm supports become “not just a great investment but actually made the world a better place.”

WndrCo invested in Airtable, a low-code platform, and Deel, a payroll and compliance company.

Twingate’s WndrCo is betting on a virtual private network (VPN) replacement. The company was founded by a WndrCo partner and is funded by Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC. Pango, which protects against identity theft, is another cybersecurity company that WndrCo has backed and built. Jaswa, Pango’s chair, explained that the reason for those investments is that so much technological innovation has occurred without constraints.

“All sorts of amazing things happened,” Jaswa said. “And yet the other half of it, which is protecting people online, nobody did anything in that dimension.”

Katzenberg and Jaswa are also waiting for guardrails in artificial intelligence. Katzenberg stated that technological advancements such as the internet and, more recently, AI come with a cost.

Katzenberg stated that “people are anxious about” the cost of AI. “We do not know. So, caution appears to be appropriate.”

Nonetheless, Jaswa remains optimistic.

“Major advances in technology are often catalyzed by humans not wanting to do something that we have to do,” he stated.

Disclosure: CNBC’s parent company is NBCUniversal.

Correction: WndrCo manages $1.3 billion. That figure was incorrect in a previous version of this article.