OpenAI Invests in Thrive Holdings, Expanding Its Loop of Cross-Deals

OpenAI is taking an ownership stake in Thrive Holdings, an investment vehicle created earlier this year by Thrive Capital, adding another example to the expanding web of circular deals involving the company behind ChatGPT and its financial backers.

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Thrive Capital already one of OpenAI’s most influential investors launched Thrive Holdings in early 2025 with the goal of building and acquiring businesses that can take advantage of advanced artificial intelligence. As part of the new partnership announced Monday, OpenAI will collaborate with Thrive Holdings to accelerate AI adoption across a range of business functions, beginning with accounting and IT operations.

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According to both companies, OpenAI plans to embed dedicated teams inside Thrive Holdings’ portfolio businesses to help improve “speed, accuracy, and cost efficiency.” The firms did not share financial terms related to OpenAI’s ownership stake in the new venture.

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Thrive Capital, founded in 2010 by Josh Kushner, has long been known for its strategy of placing a small number of significant bets and holding them for many years. Over the past two years, the firm has shifted sharply toward AI.

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Thrive first invested in OpenAI in 2023 at a valuation of $27 billion. Later that year, it led a massive $6.6 billion funding round that valued the company at $157 billion an unprecedented figure for the sector at the time. In April, the firm formally launched Thrive Holdings, borrowing elements from the private-equity playbook to build a structure capable of incubating and scaling AI-aligned companies.

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For both sides, the new alliance focuses squarely on expanding enterprise adoption of AI systems one of the most important battlegrounds in the industry today. OpenAI, along with its competitors, is under growing pressure to prove the commercial value of its technology and sign up more business customers, helping offset the enormous cost of training, deploying, and operating frontier models.

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“This partnership with Thrive Holdings is about demonstrating what’s possible when frontier AI research and deployment are rapidly integrated across entire organizations,” said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer. “We want this collaboration to become a blueprint for how companies and industries worldwide can work closely with OpenAI to transform the way they operate and engage with customers.”

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But the latest deal also adds to a series of OpenAI partnerships that have raised questions about circular investment loops between the company and its most powerful backers.

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Earlier this year, Nvidia Corp. agreed to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI to help fund a major expansion of its data-center infrastructure. In return, OpenAI committed to filling those facilities with millions of Nvidia chips, effectively sending a significant portion of that investment right back to the chipmaker.

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Just weeks later, OpenAI announced a separate multibillion-dollar partnership with Nvidia rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., agreeing to deploy tens of billions of dollars’ worth of AMD hardware. That deal would also make OpenAI one of AMD’s largest shareholders, further blurring the lines between strategic partnership and cross-ownership.

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Collectively, these arrangements highlight the increasingly intertwined relationships among leading AI developers, chipmakers, and investment firms. As the cost of building advanced AI systems skyrockets into the tens or even hundreds of billions, companies are turning to complex deal structures to secure capital, hardware access, and long-term strategic alignment.

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For Thrive Holdings, the partnership with OpenAI represents a chance to embed cutting-edge AI directly into its future portfolio companies, giving them a critical advantage as industries move toward automation, intelligent workflows, and AI-enhanced service delivery. For OpenAI, it’s another step in proving that its technology can reshape real-world businesses at scale a central part of its pitch to investors and enterprise clients.

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With AI development accelerating rapidly and competition intensifying, both firms are betting that tighter integration between AI research, capital deployment, and operational execution will become a defining model for the next stage of the industry.

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