OpenAI just made another circular deal

OpenAI announced an ownership stake in the private equity investment firm Thrive Holdings, whose parent company, Thrive Capital, is one of the main investors in, you guessed it, OpenAI. While OpenAI did not spend money on the ownership stake, according to an anonymous source cited by The Financial Times, the company announced it would provide Thrive Holdings’ companies with employees, models, products, and services.

OpenAI may also get payouts from Thrive Holdings’ future returns, the FT wrote, citing its anonymous source. It’s the latest circular deal in an industry known for running on FOMO and handing money back-and-forth between a small group of companies.

The partnership will focus on the two sectors at the top of Thrive Holdings’ priority list: IT services and accounting. It’s in these “high-volume, rules-driven, workflow-heavy processes where OpenAI’s platform can drive immediate benefits,” according to the announcement release. The stated goal is to use AI to “boost speed, accuracy, and cost efficiency while strengthening service quality.”

Joshua Kushner, CEO of Thrive Holding and Capital, and the younger brother of President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said AI is unlike past technologies that have changed 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,” Kushner said. Trump himself is a staunch booster of AI, and officials in his administration — like David Sacks — stand to benefit from the industry’s growth.

Thrive Holdings’ purpose for acquiring IT services and accounting is to “transform them using AI,” the FT wrote. As part of the deal with OpenAI, the startup will get access to data from Thrive Holdings’ companies for AI model training. There are two potential advantages for OpenAI there: one, the possibility that it can be shoehorned into companies in Thrive Holdings’ portfolio, and two, a rich new source of training data. OpenAI wants to work more broadly with the private equity industry, the anonymous source told the FT. Someone close to Thrive Capital said that OpenAI would be working as the equity group’s “research arm.”

The Thrive deal may be the first of a new wave of similar agreements, said OpenAI’s COO Brad Lightcap.