Thrive Holdings Raises $2 Billion to Buy and Rewire Services Firms With AI

A group of major artificial intelligence (AI) investors is pooling capital into a vehicle designed to buy up traditional services businesses and transform them using AI. Thrive Holdings, a one-year-old holding company started by OpenAI investor Thrive Capital, is raising around $2 billion from Altimeter Capital, D1 Capital Partners and SoftBank, according to a person familiar with the fundraising, The Information reported.

The round marks the first time outside investors have committed capital to Thrive Holdings. The company previously raised $1 billion from existing institutional backers of Thrive Capital, the venture firm founded by Josh Kushner that manages about $50 billion in assets, the Information reported.

The three new investors already have significant exposure to the AI sector. SoftBank has committed to invest more than $64 billion in OpenAI. Altimeter and D1 have backed both OpenAI and Anthropic.

Thrive Holdings typically acquires controlling stakes in companies that have themselves purchased smaller services businesses, then revamps those firms with AI tools. The owners of the rolled-up companies retain meaningful equity in their businesses, Thrive said in a June blog post. The initiative is part of a broader wave of firms modeled on conglomerates like Constellation Software that have pursued roll-ups of traditional businesses with the aim of transforming them with AI, the Information reported.

Milan-based Bending Spoons, which owns AOL, Vimeo and Eventbrite and went public on the Nasdaq last week with a market capitalization briefly exceeding $25 billion, applies a similar buy-and-hold strategy, acquiring established digital brands and overhauling them with AI and leaner operations, TechCrunch reported Sunday (July 5).

OpenAI took a stake in Thrive Holdings late last year and is providing researchers as well as product and engineering talent for the initiative. Boris Power, OpenAI’s head of applied research, holds a joint role at Thrive Holdings. Employees from Thrive and OpenAI say they co-built a tax-return processing agent using OpenAI’s coding agent Codex, which is now used by Current, a portfolio company that has acquired 48 accounting firms.

OpenAI has separately been expanding its enterprise push through similar deployment-focused vehicles. PYMNTS reported that when OpenAI first announced its stake in Thrive Holdings last December, it also unveiled a partnership with Accenture to roll out ChatGPT Enterprise to tens of thousands of the consulting firm’s professionals.