Ted Larson started his accounting practice in Bellingham, Washington in 1949 the old-fashioned way: one proprietor, one office, one client at a time. In the ensuing years, Larson Gross grew into a regional accounting powerhouse with five offices, 200 employees and tens of millions in annual revenue.

Then in 2025, the firm’s partners did something that normally makes employees of regional businesses anxious: they sold a majority stake to a holding company.

This one came with a fresher playbook, though. The Larson Gross stake was acquired by a company called Current, which is in turn owned by Thrive Holdings, a spinoff of Joshua Kushner’s venture capital firm Thrive Capital Management. It’s part of a so-called “AI roll-up” strategy that purchases local accounting firms and rewires them with artificial intelligence. Unlike traditional private equity buyouts which aim to buy and sell companies within a certain timeline, Thrive Holdings intends to hold its company stakes for long periods of time, similar to Berkshire Hathaway, while leaving meaningful minority stakes with the local partners.

Silicon Valley investors have been hyping up AI roll-ups for years, but the promise has thus far outpaced reality. (For instance, OpenAI’s $10 billion corporate consulting effort, called the OpenAI Deployment Company, is so nascent that it only has two employees at the moment).

Now, following a two year-long acquisition binge of nearly 50 local accounting practices, Thrive Holdings is providing an early look at how AI could change the professional services landscape. Thrive Holdings executives are so bullish on Current’s growth and potential that they told Forbes they are committing $1 billion to acquiring local brick-and-mortar accounting practices in the coming years.

Larson Gross tax director Tanya Silves started at the firm straight out of college, climbing the ranks over a 25-year career to eventually become a partner. She’s deeply involved in the helping the firm uplevel its technical toolset and outside work, lives on a 12-acre hobby farm where........

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