OpenAI has taken ownership of Thrive Holdings, whose parent company is Thrive Capital, one of the AI giant’s major investors.
Thrive Holdings operates like an AI private equity firm, attracting companies it believes could benefit from the technology in areas such as accounting and IT services.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed by either company, but it includes OpenAI bringing employees from its engineering, research and product teams inside Thrive to accelerate AI adoption and drive efficiencies. If these companies are successful, they could increase their stake in OpenAI and receive compensation for their services, according to people familiar with the matter.
The partnership follows a pattern of circular deals for the $500 billion AI giant, which has also recently acquired stakes in infrastructure partners such as Advanced Micro Devices and CoreWeave. For example, OpenAI invested $350 million in stock in CoreWeave, which used the funds to buy Nvidia chips. These same chips provide computing to OpenAI, increasing CoreWeave’s revenue and ultimately increasing the value of OpenAI’s stock.
Although Thrive’s contracts have a different structure, their outcomes are still interdependent. Here’s how it works: OpenAI embeds its own workers in Thrive’s portfolio companies to build products and implement systems. OpenAI makes money as companies scale based on the growth it generates.
Thrive Holdings did not assert a cyclical characterization. The spokesperson stressed that the partnership “responses to an unmet need in the market” rather than creating demand, pointing to substantial customer interest from portfolio companies such as accountancy firm Creta, which is said to have saved hundreds of hours of work using AI tools, and IT firm Shield, which preceded the formal partnership.
However, for outside investors, the essential nature of OpenAI’s involvement, and the overlapping ownership, with Thrive Capital holding stakes in both parties, makes it difficult to assess whether success is due to true market traction or benefits that may not be magnified without OpenAI’s direct support.
Analysts will be interested to see whether the Thrive-owned companies actually succeed in building long-term profitable businesses using OpenAI’s technology, or whether the result is really just an inflated valuation based on speculative market potential.
This article has been updated to further explain the nature of the transaction.
