Nothing says “eat the wealthy” like paying for the knives and forks.
A hedge fund billionaire and his artwork groupie spouse are pumping thousands and thousands into socialist thinktanks positioned to assist New York Metropolis Mayor Zohran Mamdani obtain his Democratic Socialists of America-backed “employee’s paradise.”
The pair are on a mission to punish landlords and railroad extra New Yorkers into authorities housing, The Submit has discovered.
From their $20 million Higher East Aspect townhouse — and their 10-bedroom, nine-bathroom, 10,000-square-foot Hamptons McMansion — Bobby and Carola Jain write checks funding Mamdani-linked intelligentsia paid to create fashions of how far-left ideas like common fundamental revenue (UBI) and a decommodification of the housing market would work.
It’s the form of anti-capitalist pondering that has some economists throwing up their arms.
“It have to be a type of cults the place it’s important to present you’re a member by mouthing absurd emperor’s [new] garments nonsense,” John Cochrane, an economist at Stanford College, advised The Submit.
“[16th century Grand Duke of Tuscany] Cosimo I de’ Medici supported artwork as a result of he nervous about moving into heaven as a wealthy man. I want our responsible billionaires would help nice classical artwork as a substitute of silly social causes,” he added.
Whether or not motivated by guilt, social climbing or shrewd enterprise acumen, the Jains be a part of a rising record of ultra-wealthy benefactors — additionally together with George Soros and Neville Singham — who made their billions via the capitalist system promoting software program or shorting markets, however now espouse the thrill of socialism and sharing the wealth from their ivory towers.
Their patronage means they’ve thus far prevented any shock home calls from Mamdani, who’s on a blitz towards the wealthy and, in April, filmed a viral video exterior the Billionaire’s Row house of investor Ken Griffin meant to disgrace rich people.
The stunt sparked a feud between the 2, with the hedge fund boss calling the mayor’s go to “creepy” and “bizarre.”
Jain, a Queens native, constructed a high-power finance profession over 20 years at Credit score Suisse in senior roles, later turning into co-chief funding officer at Millennium Administration, one of many world’s largest hedge funds.
He left to launch his personal hedge fund, Jain International, which raised a large $5.3 billion at launch in 2024, however after making solely modest features in 2025, he returned all money to traders and the corporate now manages cash solely for Millenium.
Jain’s socialist socialite spouse Carola has a background in advertising however now primarily works in deciding the place to allocate the household’s capital.
In accordance with tax filings, the Jains have pumped over $30 million into their Jain Household Institute. The nonprofit builds out fashions for large-scale money transfers to the downtrodden and creates roadmaps to UBI, advocating for a redistribution-focused financial system, whereas publishing supportive evaluation of Mamdani-esque insurance policies like free buses and lease freezes.
“My wealthy conservative hedge fund mates don’t get kudos on the Met Gala,” mentioned Cochrane. “As for the precise [JFI] insurance policies, they’re well-tried and well-proven disasters.”
Neither the Jains nor JFI responded to The Submit’s requests for remark.
Prime Mamdani fundraiser Robert “Jack” Gross is editor-in-chief of JFI’s journal, “Phenomenal World,” which endorses a “capitalism for builders, communism for landlords” strategy to New York’s housing troubles.
JFI retailers push decommodification rhetoric round housing which is important of personal capital and advocates a shift away from personal landlords to public or nonprofit fashions.
“Solely public possession provides an escape from the mounting stress. If New York strikes in the direction of a mannequin of social housing, it will likely be as a result of public possession is in line with secure rents in a means that possession by personal traders basically is just not,” an excerpt from one “Phenomenal World” article reads.
In an interview with John Roemer titled “Exploitation, Cooperation, and Distributive Justice” the Marxist economist advised JFI’s journal America’s most radical lefty leaders are nonetheless too conservative.
“Socialism is again on the agenda in the US, which could be very thrilling. However, what folks like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are calling socialism is the truth is only a sequence of financial reforms that don’t alter property relations,” he mentioned.
Gross is a part of a three-person group that runs the NYC Coverage Discussion board weblog — which can also be backed by JFI.
That weblog launched in December 2025 after Mamdani gained the election to develop into mayor and is positioned as a means to assist implement his socialist agenda. Headlines learn, “Making Mamdani’s Insurance coverage Plan Work,” “Why New York Metropolis Wants Public-Powered Pharmacies,” “Three Issues to Keep away from When Constructing Public Grocery Shops” and “Tax the Wealthy.”
Gross, who has deep ties to the DSA, has publicly praised father of communism Karl Marx, celebrated “Karl Marx Day” and shared passages from the pinko thinker’s Communist Manifesto. He additionally raised over $20,000 for Mamdani’s marketing campaign.
In June 2020, Gross wrote on social media that it was “stunning” when New Yorkers yelled “NYPD suck my d—ok” — a typical chorus heard throughout the George Floyd riots that summer season.
“I need to admit I do consider America is a depraved nation that have to be punished for its sins,” he wrote a couple of months later.
College students at Cornell College — the place Bobby Jain sits on the board of trustees and serves as vice chair of the funding committee — aren’t shopping for it.
Earlier this 12 months, the campus group College students for Justice in Palestine shared a video on social media outraged {that a} man holding the college’s purse strings was invested in corporations like Boeing and Caterpillar via his Jain International.
One keffiyeh-clad undergrad claimed these corporations “make bombers and bulldozers that homicide and displace Palestinians.”
“We refuse to let the board of trustees make us complicit within the genocide, oppression and dispossession of individuals all world wide,” mentioned one other scholar within the video, calling out Jain and two different board members.
In the meantime, when Carola isn’t seated entrance row at Vogue Week in New York or rubbing shoulders with pop star Girl Gaga, A-list actor Hugh Jackman and efficiency artist Marina Abramović throughout Hamptons charity galas, she sits on the advisory board for Peggy Guggenheim’s artwork assortment in Venice.
She can also be a member of the board at Harvard’s Graduate College of Design and is “constructing a brand new cultural arts and expertise company to curate, produce and promote NFT artwork and Web3 cultural experiences,” based on her web site.
The artwork buff bought conned by 2017’s Fyre Competition scandal, the ultra-luxury music pageant weekend within the Bahamas pitched to influencers and younger professionals, which turned out to be a con and abject catastrophe.
Stranded attendees arrived to search out no correct meals, housing or leisure. The man working it, Billy McFarland, had oversold and underdelivered so badly he later went to jail for wire fraud.
Carola had purchased into the scheme early and have become an investor, serving to organize thousands and thousands in funding for the mission earlier than she herself was swindled.
