OpenAI Buys Into Thrive Holdings as It Chases Faster, Deeper AI Adoption in the Corporate World

The New York Times and CNBC contributed to this report.

OpenAI is pushing even further into the business world — this time by taking an ownership stake in Thrive Holdings, a new company built by major OpenAI backer Thrive Capital to overhaul traditional industries with tech.

The deal, announced Monday, brings OpenAI directly inside Thrive Holdings’ growing portfolio of companies, where it plans to embed its own engineers, researchers, and product teams. The goal? Supercharge AI adoption, cut costs, and show in real time how quickly entire organizations can be transformed with frontier models.

Thrive Holdings is essentially a “roll-up” machine for old-school, real-economy sectors — starting with accounting and IT services. The idea is that many of these industries are ripe for AI-driven reinvention. The firm, launched in April, already owns Crete Professionals Alliance (one of the fastest-growing accounting firms in the US) and IT provider Shield Technology Partners, with more than 1,000 employees between them.

OpenAI didn’t reveal how much its new stake is worth, but it’s part of a structured deal: the better Thrive Holdings’ companies perform, the bigger OpenAI’s stake grows. It also doubles as compensation for OpenAI’s hands-on help building AI systems across Thrive’s businesses, according to people familiar with the agreement.

Thrive Capital founder Joshua Kushner — also CEO of Thrive Holdings — said the partnership will bring OpenAI’s “frontier models, products, and services” into industries where tech hasn’t yet made a major dent.

It’s a pattern for OpenAI. In recent months, the $500 billion startup has taken strategic stakes in infrastructure players like AMD and CoreWeave — both of which also power OpenAI’s own systems. Now it’s doing the same in a market where it wants massive enterprise adoption.

“We want to prove what’s possible when you integrate AI across an entire organization,” said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s COO.

And OpenAI needs that demonstration. The company has reportedly committed around $1.4 trillion in infrastructure spending through 2033 — banking on the expectation that enterprise AI revenue will explode this decade.

Thrive Holdings launched with a $1 billion war chest and plans to buy up firms that could benefit from AI—whether that’s automating tax prep, rebuilding IT workflows, or overhauling operational systems.

Crete is already working on AI tools that automate data entry and tax return processing, freeing accountants for client work. Shield, meanwhile, is on track for 10 acquisitions this year, backed by more than $100 million in investment from Thrive and ZBS Partners.

Kareem Zaki, a Thrive partner, said the goal is to make these industries “more human” by using AI to remove the repetitive grind.

Alongside its investment news, OpenAI announced a fresh enterprise partnership with consulting giant Accenture, which will roll out ChatGPT Enterprise to “tens of thousands” of employees.

The move further cements OpenAI’s push into corporate AI adoption at scale — and deepens its ties with a company already powering implementations for clients around the world.

OpenAI isn’t just building AI tools anymore — it’s embedding itself inside the companies that will use them.

By taking a stake in Thrive Holdings and placing its own teams inside the portfolio companies, OpenAI is betting big on a future where generative AI transforms entire industries from the inside out.

And if Thrive’s firms grow, so does OpenAI’s ownership — a flywheel the company hopes will power its next stage of growth.