This week, Thrive Holdings raised $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation, but it does not sell AI or agents. It buys accounting firms and IT services companies and rebuilds their workflows and operating models. It owns and operates more than 70 businesses. OpenAI took a stake in December 2025 so it could place its engineers inside Thrive’s portfolio companies.
A $12 billion valuation for a holding company full of accounting firms sounds ridiculous. Most will explain it as more evidence that private equity is excited, maybe a little overexcited, about AI. That view is reductive. I work with a few PE firms (though not any I mention in this article…NDAs), and they are running my frameworks to transform their portfolio of companies.
In this article, I’ll use what many PE firms have made public to dance around my NDAs just a little. Won’t my clients mind? Not really. They want it to leak that their thesis from about 3 years ago is what everyone else is rushing into and calling innovative today. It’s good for attracting smart capital.
Thrive is trying to prove a very specific acquisition model, and many other PE firms are putting money to work behind the same thesis. But how do you discover a thesis early?
Every technology paradigm scales access to something. Define that, and you find multiple pots of gold.
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