How OpenAI and Thrive are testing a new enterprise AI model

Thrive Holdings’ push to modernise accounting and IT services is entering a new stage, as OpenAI prepares to take an ownership stake in the company and place its own specialists inside Thrive’s businesses. In doing so, OpenAI is testing an AI-driven model that pairs capital, sector expertise, and embedded technical teams.

Thrive started its holding company earlier this year to buy and manage firms in day-to-day service industries. Its aim has been to rebuild these companies with more efficient processes, new data practices, and practical uses of AI. OpenAI’s deeper involvement now turns that idea into a real-time experiment in how traditional providers can update their work without relying only on off-the-shelf tools.

A test case for bringing AI into core operational work

While most enterprise discussions about AI tend to revolve around pilots and proof-of-concepts, Thrive is taking a different approach: buying companies outright and redesigning how they run. Its two current businesses – Crete Professionals Alliance (accounting) and Shield Technology Partners (IT services) – employ more than 1,000 people. Thrive has committed $500 million to Crete and, together with ZBS Partners, more than $100 million to Shield.

For companies watching from the outside, the appeal is clear. These industries carry heavy workloads, manual tasks, and tight margins. They also handle sensitive data and operate under strict deadlines. Any AI system introduced into that environment needs domain context, training, and adjustments that fit local processes – not generic automation.

Crete has already begun using AI to cut down routine tasks like data entry and early-stage tax workflows. Shield is on track to complete 10 acquisitions by the end of the year, giving Thrive a base of IT operations which it intends to redesign with new tools and methods.

What OpenAI gains

OpenAI is under pressure to find real, enterprise-scale use cases for its models. Investors value the company at roughly $500 billion, and its long-term commitments include about $1.4 trillion in infrastructure spending through 2033. To justify those figures, it is betting that businesses will spend heavily on tools that help them work faster and handle complex tasks at volume.

By taking a stake in Thrive Holdings, OpenAI gains something it cannot produce on its own: access to companies where it can experience models in day-to-day working, and training specialists on real operations. The more Thrive’s companies grow, the more OpenAI’s stake may expand, according to a person familiar with the deal.

Joshua Kushner, founder of both Thrive Capital and Thrive Holdings, said, “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.”

The partnership also gives OpenAI a path to collect value from the engineering support it provides. Its team will develop custom models for Thrive’s companies and embed researchers and engineers on site, according to partner Anuj Mehndiratta, who oversees product and technology strategy at Thrive Holdings.

What enterprises can learn from this approach

For many companies, the hardest part of using AI is not the model but the redesign of existing work. Thrive’s strategy reflects a shift toward deeper integration, where AI teams sit inside the business units they support rather than acting as external advisers.

The model lets companies:

• Build tools shaped around real workflows, not abstract use cases
• Train models on controlled, high-quality data
• Reduce the gap between engineering teams and front-line employees
• Test changes faster, with direct feedback from staff

It also surfaces the real cost of AI adoption. Custom work requires engineering time, domain knowledge, and long-term alignment between owners and model developers. Thrive’s partnership with OpenAI formalises that alignment in a way that may become more common as enterprises look for results rather than demonstrations.

Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s COO, said, “The partnership with Thrive Holdings is about demonstrating what’s possible when frontier AI research and deployment are rapidly deployed in entire organisations to revolutionise how businesses work and engage with customers.”

The wider competitive landscape

The deal lands at a time when AI companies are trying to anchor themselves inside major enterprise accounts. Anthropic is reaching more businesses through Microsoft partnerships, and. Google is drawing interest with its latest model and has seen its market value rise as companies explore new AI options. OpenAI, meanwhile, has taken stakes in partners like AMD and CoreWeave to support its long-term infrastructure needs.

OpenAI also expanded its reach on Monday this week, announcing a separate agreement with Accenture. Its ChatGPT Enterprise product will be rolled out to “tens of thousands” of Accenture employees, giving OpenAI another route into large-scale corporate use.

A possible blueprint

If Thrive’s companies show meaningful improvement in how they operate, the model could influence how other enterprises think about AI transformation. Rather than layering tools on top of old processes, some may move toward deeper restructuring, guided by technical teams that understand both the model and the business.

For now, Thrive Holdings serves as a live case study of what that approach looks like when applied to industries that rarely make tech headlines but form the backbone of day-to-day business operations.

See also: AI business reality – what enterprise leaders need to know

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