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OpenAI Rolls into Shield’s Roll-up Portfolio Through Thrive
By Dave RaffoShareshare

OpenAI’s investment in Thrive Holdings disclosed last week can have a significant impact on the MSP market.

ChatGPT parent OpenAI has taken an ownership stake in Thrive Holdings, which is one of the owners of MSP portfolio owner Shield Technology Partners

Thrive Holdings and ZBS Partners launched Shield last June with more than $100 million in funding. Thrive’s press release announcing Shield described it as “an AI-enabled managed IT service platform that is redefining technology services through investment in innovation and commitment to exceptional customer service.”

Shield is a new player to the MSP portfolio landscape, and has aggressively invested in MSPs since it came out of stealth. It now has controlling interest in at least seven MSPs – IronOrbit, Clearfuze, Delval Technical Solutions, NetAscendant, BCS365, SK Tech Group and OneNet Global.

Shield executives point to Thrive’s AI development team stacked with Silicon Valley engineering talent as one of the advantages it brings MSPs in its portfolio. Thrive’s financial backing is another advantage -- Thrive Capital created Thrive Holdings with $1 billion in funding -- and the OpenAI investment in Thrive also will help attract MSPs.

“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,” said Joshua Kushner, CEO and founder of Thrive Capital and Thrive Holdings. “Historically, technology transformed industries from the outside in. We believe this paradigm shift will happen from the inside out as domain experts and practitioners use AI as a native tool to reshape their fields. The businesses we acquire represent the right reward systems for this evolution, bringing together industry expertise and real-world data that can help improve models on specific tasks and capabilities.”

It's no surprise that Thrive and Shield are looking to make AI a key engine of growth for Shield’s MSPs.

“We think the impact AI has in businesses and in the enterprise is going to be actually transformative,” OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap told the New York Times. “That could happen on a near-term timeline. And we’re trying to figure out how to kind of make that happen as fast as we can.”

A Shield source said another major announcement is coming this month, so watch this space.