Brightstar Capital Partners, a private equity firm focused on investing in business services, industrials, consumer, and government services, and technology companies, has appointed Marcelo Claure as Partner and Co-Chair.
Claure, the Founder and CEO of Claure Group and former CEO of Sprint and Softbank International, also will increase his investment in Brightstar. He will focus on Brightstar’s deal origination, capital formation, value creation strategies, and the implementation of AI initiatives across the Firm’s portfolio companies.
Claure will serve as Co-Chair alongside the Firm’s founder and CEO, Andrew Weinberg. His appointment further cements a partnership that began when the two leaders built Brightstar – which Claure founded as a young entrepreneur by selling phones from the back of his car.
With Weinberg first serving as lead investor and later as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Strategy Officer, Brightstar became the world’s largest wireless distribution and services company before its sale to Softbank in 2014.
Claure subsequently led Sprint as CEO, delivering the company’s strongest financial results in its 120-year history, and orchestrated the $26bn merger with T-Mobile US, now the world’s most valuable telecommunications company. He later served as CEO of SoftBank Group International, managing over $450bn in assets.
Today, Claure leads Claure Group, a multi-billion-dollar global investment firm, and remains T-Mobile’s largest individual shareholder and an active board member with a particular focus on AI strategy. He also serves as Co-Chair of Harvard University’s Digital Data Design (D^3) AI Institute.
