Few political contradictions are as striking as underwriting anti-wealth activism from the highest tiers of the economic elite.
A hedge fund billionaire and his art-world-connected wife are directing millions of dollars toward a think tank that is now closed. Its affiliated publication posted content supportive of parts of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic Socialists of America-aligned vision for a “worker’s paradise.”
According to information obtained by The Post, one of the articles by a contributing author looked into advancing policies that would pressure landlords and push more New Yorkers toward government-backed housing models.
From their $20 million Upper East Side townhouse — as well as a 10-bedroom, nine-bathroom, 10,000-square-foot Hamptons estate — Bobby and Carola Jain have funded Mamdani-linked policy thinkers tasked with modeling how left-wing proposals such as universal basic income and the “decommodification” of housing could operate in practice.
Those ideas, which challenge core assumptions of market capitalism, have drawn sharp skepticism from some economists.
“It must be one of those cults where you have to show you’re a member by mouthing absurd emperor’s [new] clothes nonsense,” John Cochrane, an economist at Stanford University, told The Post.
“[16th century Grand Duke of Tuscany] Cosimo I de’ Medici supported art because he worried about getting into heaven as a rich man. I wish our guilty billionaires would support great classical art instead of stupid social causes,” he added.
Whatever the motivation — personal conviction, social positioning, guilt or calculated self-interest — the Jains are part of a broader class of ultra-rich donors, including figures such as George Soros and Neville Singham, who amassed fortunes through capitalism while later championing socialist causes and wealth redistribution from positions of extraordinary privilege.
Their patronage means they have so far avoided any surprise house calls from Mamdani, who is on a blitz against the rich and, in April, filmed a viral video outside the Billionaire’s Row home of investor Ken Griffin intended to shame wealthy folks.
The stunt sparked a feud between the two, with the hedge fund boss calling the mayor’s visit “creepy” and “weird.”
Jain, a Queens native, built a high-power finance career over 20 years at Credit Suisse in senior roles, later becoming co-chief investment officer at Millennium Management, one of the world’s largest hedge funds.
He left to launch his own hedge fund, Jain Global, which raised a massive $5.3 billion at launch in 2024, but after making only modest gains in 2025, it will return all cash to its multi-strategy fund investors and manage money exclusively for Millenium later this year.
Jain’s socialite wife Carola, has a background in marketing and now sits on the
advisory board for Peggy Guggenheim’s art collection in Venice. She is also a member of the board at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and is “building a new cultural arts and technology agency to curate, produce, and promote NFT art and Web3 cultural experiences,” according to her website.
According to tax filings, the Jains have pumped over $30 million into their Jain Family Institute. The nonprofit builds out models for large-scale cash transfers to the downtrodden and creates roadmaps to UBI, advocating for a redistribution-focused economy, while its affiliated publication posted supportive analysis of Mamdani-esque policies like free buses and rent freezes.
“My rich conservative hedge fund friends don’t get kudos at the Met Gala,” said Cochrane. “As for the actual [JFI] policies, they are well-tried and well-proven disasters.”
“Bobby is a pragmatic capitalist and an avid defender of free markets. JFI wound down after a decade of pursuing non-partisan, market-based solutions to real-world problems,” a spokesperson for the Jains countered.
Top Mamdani fundraiser Robert “Jack” Gross lists himself as editor-in-chief of JFI’s magazine, “Phenomenal World,” which posted guest content regarding “capitalism for developers, communism for landlords” approach to New York’s housing troubles.
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JFI outlets have pushed decommodification rhetoric around housing, which is critical of private capital and advocates a shift away from private landlords to public or nonprofit models. Sources pointed out that although the Jains partially funded “Phenomenal World,” they didn’t have any editorial control over what it
published.
“Only public ownership offers an escape from the mounting pressure. If New York moves towards a model of social housing, it will be because public ownership is consistent with stable rents in a way that ownership by private investors fundamentally is not,” an excerpt from one ‘Phenomenal World’ article reads.
In an interview with John Roemer titled “Exploitation, Cooperation, and Distributive Justice,” the Marxist economist told JFI’s magazine that America’s most radical lefty leaders are still too conservative.
“Socialism is back on the agenda in the United States, which is very exciting. Nevertheless, what people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are calling socialism is in fact just a series of economic reforms that don’t alter property relations,” he said.
Gross is now part of a three-person team that runs the NYC Policy Forum blog, which was also backed by JFI. “JFI is a nonpartisan research org is in no way a ‘socialist think tank’, and ‘Phenomenal World’ features a wide variety of opinions and is not directed by or reflective of JFI’s founder,” said a spokesperson for JFI.
That blog launched in December 2025 after Mamdani won the election to become mayor and is positioned as a way to help implement his socialist agenda. Headlines read, “Making Mamdani’s Insurance Plan Work,” “Why New York City Needs Public-Powered Pharmacies,” “Three Things to Avoid When Building Public Grocery Stores,” and “Tax the Rich.”
Gross, who has deep ties to the DSA, has publicly praised the father of communism, Karl Marx, celebrated “Karl Marx Day” and shared passages from the pinko philosopher’s Communist Manifesto. He also raised over $20,000 for Mamdani’s campaign.
In June 2020, Gross wrote on social media that it was “beautiful” when New Yorkers yelled “NYPD suck my d—k” — a common refrain heard during the George Floyd riots that summer.
“I must admit I do believe America is a wicked nation that must be punished for its sins,” he wrote a few months later.
Students at Cornell University — where Bobby Jain sits on the board of trustees and serves as vice chair of the investment committee — aren’t buying it.
Earlier this year, the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine shared a video on social media, outraged that a man holding the school’s purse strings was invested in companies like Boeing and Caterpillar.
One keffiyeh-clad undergrad claimed those companies “make bombers and bulldozers that murder and displace Palestinians.”
“We refuse to let the board of trustees make us complicit in the genocide, oppression and dispossession of people all around the world,” said another student in the video, calling out Jain and two other board members.
Meanwhile, when Carola isn’t seated front row at Fashion Week in New York or rubbing shoulders with pop star Lady Gaga, A-list actor Hugh Jackman and performance artist Marina Abramović during Hamptons charity galas, she sits on the advisory board for Peggy Guggenheim’s art collection in Venice.
She is also a member of the board at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and is “building a new cultural arts and technology agency to curate, produce and promote NFT art and Web3 cultural experiences,” according to her website.
The art buff got conned by 2017’s Fyre Festival scandal, the ultra-luxury music festival weekend in the Bahamas pitched to influencers and young professionals, which turned out to be a con and abject disaster.
Stranded attendees arrived to find no proper food, housing or entertainment. The guy running it, Billy McFarland, had oversold and underdelivered so badly he later went to prison for wire fraud.
Carola had bought into the scheme early and became an investor, helping arrange millions in funding for the project before she herself was swindled.
