For many financial firms, the most promising way to invest in artificial intelligence isn’t through the labs that produce leading-edge models. It’s through companies that seek ways to apply A.I. to real-world business uses.
The latest beneficiary of that interest is Thrive Holdings, which buys up traditional service providers like accounting businesses and infuses them with A.I.
The company said it planned to announce on Wednesday that it had raised $2 billion in new funding, valuing it at $12 billion. Investors in the round include SoftBank, D1 Capital Partners and Altimeter Capital.
It’s another sign that the more practical elements of the A.I. boom are gaining in prominence — and drawing investor dollars. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have teamed up with big private equity firms on billion-dollar ventures that help their portfolio companies adopt A.I. tools.
And it’s a ratification of Thrive Holdings’ strategy of buying or creating platforms in established industries and helping them to use A.I. in their businesses. The company was created last year by Thrive Capital, an investment firm founded by Joshua Kushner. In addition to being a venture capitalist, he’s the brother of Jared Kushner, a son-in-law of President Trump. Thrive Capital has made significant bets on A.I. companies like OpenAI.
(Thrive Holdings began with an initial $1 billion in funding, largely from existing Thrive Capital investors like pension funds and endowments.)
Thrive Holdings has so far concentrated on two businesses: Current, which focuses on accounting, and Shield Technology Partners, which focuses on information technology.
“We want to take A.I. from benchmarks and theoreticals and make contact with the real world,” Kareem Zaki, a Thrive Capital partner who runs investment strategy at Thrive Holdings, said in an interview.
That has meant creating a team of more than 20 A.I. engineers and product managers. Boris Power, the head of applied research at OpenAI, which took a stake in Thrive Holdings last year, is the head of research at the Thrive offshoot.
The results of the approach are promising, according to Thrive Holdings:
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Member firms of Current this tax season processed more than 7,000 returns and decreased their prep times by nearly a third. Current is now one of the 20 biggest U.S. accounting companies.
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Firms associated with Shield have been able to resolve I.T. queries 36 times faster on average.
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Overall, Thrive Holdings’ platform is on track to surpass $1 billion in revenue.
Thrive Holdings is now creating a third platform that’s focused on navigating regulatory paperwork in the construction industry, such as permits and compliance tracking. Like Current and Shield, according to Mr. Zaki, it is a sector burdened with repetitive filings and other actions ripe for automation.
Because Thrive Holdings is a so-called permanent capital vehicle, it faces no expiration date for the capital it collects from investors — or pressure to sell its holdings. (The models, according to Mr. Zaki, are conglomerates like Berkshire Hathaway and Danaher.)
But given the company’s results, the management team saw the opportunity to raise more money to keep investing in Current and Shield and to build new platforms like the construction one, he said.
The firm initially held discussions in the spring about raising money from existing investors, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the discussions.
It later expanded to new potential backers, including SoftBank, D1 and Altimeter, which have also bet heavily on A.I., this person added.
The new fund-raising doesn’t mean that Thrive Holdings intends to rapidly expand into new industries.
“It’s actually to go deep in the ones that are really working and double down or triple down,” said Anuj Mehndiratta, a Thrive Capital partner who oversees Thrive Holdings’ technology strategy.
