Reading Room

ADT Q3 2026 results; guidance withdrawn pending the Thrive transaction.

Target company press release announcing the definitive agreement.

Acquirer statement on the ADT agreement; source of the ">75 businesses" figure.

Profiles RRBB practitioners including Rob Quick, Dave Roth, and Susan DiPaolo. Recounts a prior software initiative that failed because document-scanning work was not adopted.

Announced September 1, 2026, from Salem, Utah. Current announced that Preferred CFO joined the platform. Based in the greater Salt Lake City metro area, Preferred CFO provides fractional CFO, controller, outsourced accounting, strategic finance, and capital-raising support to businesses nationwide, and has operated for more than a decade, with the firm dating its founding to 2013. Its work covers forecasting and financial modeling, cash flow management, budgets and operating plans, capital preparation and raises, and strengthening controller functions. Current framed the addition as advancing its strategy to build one of the country's leading advisory organizations and as a milestone in its national expansion, positioning the combination of experienced professionals, modern technology, specialized expertise, and strategic advisory as the direction of the profession. Preferred CFO said clients should expect near-term continuity with the same professionals, while joining Current gives the firm access to broader technology, AI systems, national resources, and collaboration across the network. Existing client relationships, local leadership, and culture are retained.

Reports over $2 billion in new capital at a $12 billion valuation, over $3 billion raised since inception, and more than 70 businesses. Announces expansion into built-environment services.

Announces a $35 million Series B led by The General Partnership and Allen Shim joining as president/CFO. Describes a permanent holdco with embedded technologists.

Links earlier venture-buyout and growth-buyout terminology to current roll-up activity and presents AGI as a newer example.

Announced July 9, 2026, from Somerset, New Jersey. RRBB announced its fifth tuck-in acquisition since joining Current in August 2023, growing from roughly $20 million in revenue at the time it joined to a $44 million platform. RRBB was Current's first partner firm. Two months after joining, it added Mendonca & Partners Certified Public Accountants LLC, an international tax firm in Union, New Jersey with import/export expertise and approximately $8 million in revenue. The release frames RRBB as a pioneer within the network, presenting its sequence of tuck-ins as a repeatable model combining integration, technology enablement, access to capital, and global service delivery to drive both inorganic and organic growth. RRBB offers accounting, advisory, and consulting services from offices in New Jersey and New York. Current, founded by Jake Sloane and Frank Zhang and backed by Thrive Holdings, is described as a national partnership of more than 30 accounting and advisory firms built on local leadership and entrepreneurial autonomy, and was named to Accounting Today's list of best firms for technology.

Argues that relationships and professional judgment become more valuable as routine work gets cheaper. Makes permanent ownership, practitioner ownership, and organizational change central.

Confirms the rename and continuity of the accounting platform. Describes local ownership, branding, leadership, and the Tax AI initiative.

Describes a practitioner-feedback and evaluation loop for Tax AI. Reports a 7,000-return pilot, roughly one-third less preparation time, and about 50% greater throughput.

Announced February 2, 2026, from New York. Shield Technology Partners raised $100 million from Thrive Holdings to fund product development and further acquisitions across its national IT services platform. Shield reported surpassing $100 million in annual revenue in 2025 and partnering with nine IT services companies across the US serving more than 1,500 customers in sectors including construction, energy, and healthcare; it had majority stakes in four MSPs at its June 2025 launch, which carried more than $100 million in initial capital. Part of the investment supports Shield's engineering team, which works alongside OpenAI researchers to build and embed AI products for IT engineers. Two internal products were named: Sentinel, which monitors and triages customer tickets and routes them by engineer, timing, and priority, and Spectre, which helps engineers orchestrate multiple agents to resolve requests. Jim Siders is chief executive of Shield; Anuj Mehndiratta of the Thrive Holdings founding team commented, as did Alexander Saca, chief executive of partner company IronOrbit. Shield was formed as a collaboration between Thrive Holdings and ZBS Partners, pairing Thrive's technical capability with ZBS's approach to founder-led businesses.

Announced January 28, 2026, from Irvine, California. Force 10 Partners, a national financial advisory firm specializing in corporate restructuring and litigation support, joined Crete Professionals Alliance, extending Crete's advisory capabilities into restructuring. Force 10 serves debtors, secured creditors, creditors' committees, and fiduciaries in restructuring, bankruptcy, and dispute-driven matters, with practice areas spanning turnaround management, fiduciary engagements, valuation, forensic accounting, and complex litigation support across consumer, healthcare, financial services, technology, and real estate. The firm said it sought a partner able to support its next phase of expansion without compromising independence, culture, or technical rigor. Through the alliance, Force 10 gains access to long-term capital and operational resources to expand its team, deepen specialized capabilities, and invest in infrastructure for larger engagements. It continues to operate under its own brand, with Force Ten Advisors, LLC as its operating entity and its existing leadership and professionals in place. Steve Stagner, chief executive of Crete, framed the addition as reflecting a market shift toward more specialized, outcome-driven services.

Accessible opening reports expansion across major investors and distinguishes vertical roll-ups from multi-industry holding companies.

Announces joint research, engineering, and operating work, with OpenAI becoming an owner of Thrive Holdings.

Announced August 12, 2025, from New York. Titan, an AI holding company incubated by General Catalyst, announced $74 million in funding led by General Catalyst and, in the same release, its acquisition of Richard Fleischman & Associates (RFA), a New York-based managed service provider with roughly 250 employees serving more than 400 financial services clients across multiple countries. RFA becomes Titan's first MSP platform, into which Titan layers its augmented AI stack. The stated thesis is that traditional MSPs are constrained by legacy tooling and manual, ticket-based workflows, and that agentic AI can automate routine support, predict failures, and free technicians to act as strategic advisers rather than reactive support. Co-founders Saurin Patel and David Heffernan said Titan intends to acquire additional IT services firms. Yohan Kim is chief executive of RFA; Marc Bhargava, managing director at General Catalyst, commented on the investment. The deal was one of several executions of General Catalyst's AI-enabled roll-up program, for which the firm allocated $1.5 billion beginning in late 2023.

Argues for owning distribution while acknowledging the difficulty of combining software development with acquisition integration.

Curates frameworks and operator interviews. Pushes back on treating software multiples as a necessary condition for the thesis.