Thomas Kaplan

Electrum Group

Since the sales of African Platinum and Leor, Kaplan has focused on the Electrum Group which holds interests in several publicly traded companies including NovaGold Resources. In May 2019, with gold then trading at $1,280 per ounce, Kaplan was quoted as saying: “I do believe gold embarks upon the next leg of its bull market and goes past $1,900 and ultimately, $3,000 to $5,000, if not a lot higher, depending on macro circumstances that today seem dim, but which I can’t really quantify.”

In August 2020, it was reported that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway had made an investment in Barrick Gold, NOVAGOLD's joint venture partner in the Donlin Gold mine project in Alaska.

The Electrum Group was formerly the controlling shareholder in the Los Gatos silver-zinc deposit in Mexico, which it developed in partnership with Dowa of Japan. Los Gatos Silver went public in October 2020, raising $170 million. In September 2024, Gatos Silver was acquired by First Majestic for $970 million.

In December 2020, with silver trading at $24 per ounce, he was quoted as saying the precious metal would hit “triple digits.”

The Electrum Group is the controlling shareholder of Sunshine Silver Mining & Refining Corporation, which owns the Sunshine Mine in Idaho, one of the largest and highest grade silver producers in U.S. history, as well as Sinda Ltd., an exploration-stage silver miner with operations in Guanajuato, Mexico.

In April 2025, together with fellow investor John Paulson, Kaplan's NOVAGOLD secured control of Donlin Gold, which is developing America's biggest gold mine in Alaska, by buying Barrick Mining's 50% interest in the project for $1 billion. In July 2026, NOVAGOLD acquired Paulson’s interests in Donlin Gold in an all-share transaction, creating a U.S.-based gold developer valued at US$4.2 billion.

In June 2026, Sunshine Silver Mining & Refining raised $270 million in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. The company has stated it plan to use IPO proceeds to fund feasibility studies and exploration to restart production.

That same month, Electrum-backed Sinda Ltd. raised $323 million in a NYSE IPO and concurrent private placement with Fresnillo, the world's largest silver producer..

Community, culture, and antiquities

Kaplan served as president (2009–2012) and chairman of the board of directors (2012–2015) of the 92nd Street Y, a prominent Jewish community and cultural center in New York City. His wife Dafna and Robert Gilson conceived of the Recanati–Kaplan Program for Excellence in the Arts, which funds scholarships based on artistic merit for children and teens to study at the 92Y's School of the Arts. In Florida, where Kaplan grew up, he and his wife funded the Lillian Jean Kaplan Renal Transplantation Center at the University of Miami, as well as prizes and grants for renal science research focused on polycystic kidney disease (PKD).

In 2014, along with the Florence Gould Foundation, the Kaplans helped fund the creation of Albertine, a bookshop housed in the historic Payne Whitney House of the French Embassy on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Albertine has the largest collection of French-language books and English translations in the U.S. In 2022, Villa Albertine, a French government-sponsored residency program for artists and intellectuals in the U.S., launched the Recanati-Kaplan Prize to "support artistic and intellectual exchange between the United States, France, and the Arab world". The prize awards one recognized individual from the Arab world with a residency project in the U.S.

In 2015, after the passing of his boyhood friend, Simon Marsh, Kaplan parted with the two Spitfire Mark I fighter planes that he and Marsh had as partners restored with Historic Flying of Duxford, Cambridgeshire. The second of the planes, Spitfire N3200, was gifted in the presence of Prince William, the then Duke of Cambridge, to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford, where it had last flown as the personal aircraft of the Commander of 19 Squadron, Geoffrey Dalton Stephenson, later personal pilot to King George VI. The first, Spitfire P9374, flown by Captain Peter Cazenove over Dunkirk, was sold at auction at Christies London, where it achieved a record price for any Spitfire at auction, the proceeds of which were donated for the benefit of the RAF Benevolent Society, Panthera, Oxford's WildCRU and Stop Ivory.

In 2017, Kaplan became the chairman of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH), a Geneva-based foundation dedicated to the implementation of preventive, emergency response, and restoration programs for cultural property in danger of destruction, damage or looting. At the time of his retirement as Chairman, ALIPH’s activities encompassed 640 projects in 65 countries including Mali, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, and Ukraine.

On October 29, 2019, at a ceremony in New York in which Princess Dana Firas of Jordan received the 2019 Watch Award, the World Monuments Fund bestowed upon Kaplan the Hadrian Award, a recognition established in 1988 to honor international leaders who have advanced the preservation of world art and architecture.

Conservation

Dubbed the "King of Cats", by Forbes Magazine, Kaplan was for 15 years the executive chairman of Panthera Corporation, a charity which he and his wife co-founded with Alan Rabinowitz in 2006. Panthera is devoted to preserving the big cats and their ecosystems and has been recognized as a leading force in felid conservation. The work of the organization has been called a "Manhattan Project" for big cats by reporter Bob Simon of 60 Minutes.

Conservationist Doug Tompkins has referred to Panthera as "the foremost big cat conservation organization in the world", with National Geographic saying Panthera "represents the most comprehensive effort of its kind in wildcat conservation." For his work as an environmentalist, Kaplan was the recipient of the "Hero of the Year Award" by the IWFF in 2012. In an interview with David Rubenstein, part of Bloomberg's "Peer-to-Peer Conversations" series, Kaplan said, "If I have one passion, which is even greater than Rembrandt, it would be wildlife conservation..." In an interview with Sotheby's, Kaplan connected his two passions: "I see the common denominator between the power of a Rembrandt and the power of when you first encounter a tiger in the wild. It's beauty."

Kaplan and his wife Dafna helped establish a felid conservation program at Oxford University in collaboration with David MacDonald. In 2009, the couple endowed the Recanati-Kaplan Center at Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, the WildCRU, and the university's Postgraduate Diploma in International Wildlife Conservation Practice, which offers young conservationists from developing countries access to training at Oxford. In February 2012, Oxford's WildCRU was awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher Education in recognition of WildCRU's outstanding work in wildlife and environmental conservation. In July 2015, a trophy hunter killed Cecil the lion, who was being studied by the WildCRU's Kaplan-funded Hwange Lion Research Project in Zimbabwe.

The Kaplans also founded the Orianne Society, focused on the conservation of the eastern indigo snake and its habitat, the last remaining long-leaf pine forests of the Southeastern United States. As part of this effort, the Kaplans created the Orianne Indigo Snake Preserve in Georgia through the purchase and donation of 2,500 acres of the snake's winter habitat. In recognition for their work in wildlife conservation, in 2014 the Kaplans were awarded the New Species Award, and the naming of the newly discovered Orianne's Tree Snake, by the African Rainforest Conservancy.

On November 12, 2018, at the inaugural Paris Peace Forum, Kaplan launched the Indian Ocean Tortoise Alliance (IOTA), a Seychelles-based initiative dedicated to the conservation of the Aldabra tortoise and its rewilding in the other countries where it previously existed.

In 2020, Panthera launched a campaign called "Leopard Spotted" to encourage wearers of leopard print to promote awareness of the animal's plight on social media and donate to conservation efforts via a royalties system. Kaplan told The New Yorker, "We're not interested in discouraging people from using leopard print. To the contrary, what we want to do is make people understand that, while celebrating the leopard, they can also give back. If royalties were paid for any fashion statement like this, there would be more than enough money to save the leopard."

In February 2026, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of Panthera, Kaplan and co-owner, Panthera Chairman, Jon Ayers, sold the drawing Young Lion Resting by Rembrandt for $17.8m with the proceeds going to benefit the organization. The Sotheby's auction shattered the record for the most expensive drawing by the 17th-century Dutch painter previously set at $3.7m for The Bulwark De Rose and the Windmill De Smeerpot.

In June 2026, Kaplan pledged £4 million to his alma mater, Pembroke College, to establish The Recanati-Kaplan Minerva Institute. The program will address global challenges at the intersection of environmental conservation and security. The institute will enhance multi-disciplinary collaboration between the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) and Oxford's Changing Character of War: Strategy, Statecraft, and Technology Centre (CCW-SST).