๐จ BREAKING: Joshua Kushner's
@ThriveCapital is putting $1 billion into buying local accounting firms and rebuilding them around AI.
The acquisition arm is a company called Current.
The pitch to a decades-old CPA firm: sell us a majority stake, keep a meaningful piece for yourselves, and we'll re-engineer the back office with AI.
The ownership model is the part worth a look:
โ Traditional PE buys to sell inside a fixed window
โ Thrive plans to hold for the long run, the way Berkshire Hathaway does
โ Local partners keep real, meaningful stakes
Patient capital, pointed at a fragmented, unglamorous industry.
The proof point so far is Larson Gross โ one accountant, one office in Bellingham, WA in 1949, grown into a regional firm with five offices and 200 employees.
In 2025 its partners sold control to Current.
@Forbes reports the in-house models are hitting up to 98% accuracy on data entry.
Worth being precise, though โ data entry is the high-volume floor of accounting, not the judgment work clients actually pay for.
The skepticism is fair, too.
AI roll-ups have been hyped for years and mostly underdelivered. The gap between the pitch and the operating reality is still wide.
The bet underneath all of this: that permanent capital plus AI can run a professional-services firm better than the people who spent decades building it.
If it works in accounting, the same template is waiting for law, insurance, and consulting.
A billion-dollar wager on the back office of American business.