How Thrive Capital is quietly buying 50 accounting firms with AI
Thrive Capital — Josh Kushner's firm, early in Instagram and OpenAI — spun out a vehicle called Thrive Holdings and started buying local accounting firms. That surprised a lot of people. They've acquired close to 50 firms over the last 24 months and just committed another billion dollars to buy more, which signals it's working. One example is Larsson Gross, a firm in Bellingham, Washington that has been around since 1949, with five offices and 200 people. After Thrive got involved, the firm started using AI built on OpenAI's Codex — Thrive likely has some kind of partnership with OpenAI. This past tax season the firm processed 7,000 returns, and accountants saved an average of 31% of their time. That's what margin expansion looks like when you layer AI onto a legacy service business priced as if nothing can change.
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