OpenAI takes a stake in Thrive Holdings without putting up any cash

OpenAI has taken equity in Thrive Holdings, the private equity firm created by one of its biggest investors, Josh Kushner, in a deal confirmed on Monday.

The move links the $500 billion AI company even tightly to the same network of investors, customers, and suppliers that already fund and power it, according to the report this article is based on.

Thrive Holdings was built to buy accounting and IT companies and rebuild them with artificial intelligence at the center. Now OpenAI is directly inside that structure.

Thrive Capital, the New York investment firm run by Josh Kushner, poured more than $1 billion into OpenAI in late 2024. Since that raise, OpenAI’s valuation has more than tripled. Earlier this year, Thrive Capital launched Thrive Holdings as a separate vehicle to buy service firms and push AI into their daily work.

Monday’s deal now gives OpenAI ownership inside that effort as it pushes harder into business customers from a base that was once mostly consumer.

OpenAI trades tools, people, and data for equity and future gains

The financial terms were not made public. But a person close to the deal said OpenAI did not put up cash.

Instead, the company received a “meaningful” stake in Thrive Holdings in exchange for giving Thrive’s portfolio companies access to OpenAI’s products, engineers, developers, and research teams.

That same person allegedly said OpenAI will be paid later from the future financial returns of Thrive Holdings. The agreement also gives OpenAI access to company data from Thrive’s businesses to help train its AI models.

That same person said OpenAI is “very much interested in working more broadly with the private equity industry.” Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer, said in a statement, “This partnership with Thrive Holdings is about demonstrating what’s possible when frontier AI research and deployment are rapidly deployed across entire organizations to revolutionize how businesses work and engage with customers.”

Brad added that he hopes the deal “serves as a model for how businesses and industries around the world can deeply partner with OpenAI.”

Josh Kushner also issued a statement.“We are excited to extend our partnership with OpenAI to embed their frontier models, products and services into sectors we believe have tremendous potential to benefit from technological innovation and adoption,” he said.

Josh is the brother of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump.

A person close to Thrive Capital allegedly described the deal as OpenAI becoming the “research arm” of Thrive Holdings. Thrive Capital itself does not own a direct stake in Thrive Holdings. But it created the company, ran its initial $1 billion fundraising, and both firms share several of the same investors.

Enterprise push expands as deals and scrutiny grow

The Thrive deal lands as Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, pushes the company deeper into business use. Sam recently said the company now has a “huge focus on leaning into enterprise” after years of growth driven by consumers.

ChatGPT now reaches about 800 million weekly users. OpenAI also has roughly 1 million enterprise customers, including Spotify, Canva, and Zillow.

OpenAI’s growing web of financial ties has drawn rising scrutiny. In recent months, the company has signed multiple agreements with chip suppliers, including Nvidia and AMD.

Those deals give OpenAI financial incentives, such as equity investment in exchange for committing to large purchases of computing chips needed to run and train its systems.

In May, OpenAI also completed the acquisition of io, a hardware startup run by former Apple executive Jonny Ive, in a deal valued at $6.5 billion. The deal was completed entirely with stock. No cash was paid.

On the same Monday that the Thrive Holdings deal was announced, OpenAI also confirmed a new partnership with Accenture. The startup said its business product, ChatGPT Enterprise, will roll out to “tens of thousands” of Accenture employees.

The rollout puts OpenAI tools directly into one of the largest consulting workforces in the world, adding to the company’s growing presence inside corporate operations.

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