The evolution of Mckinsey of AI --> OpenAI partners with Thrive Holdings

How OpenAI and Thrive Holdings are quietly building AI-native accounting and IT giants and rewriting the enterprise AI playbook.

Hey everybody, welcome back to The AI Opportunity.

Some months ago, I broke down OpenAI’s AI consulting Business.

Now, that business has evolved and it looks like they just took a massive leap: they partnered with Thrive Holdings to deploy their AI directly into the companies invested by Thrive.

Enjoy :)

On December 1st, OpenAI announced one of its most important deals so far.

OpenAI took an ownership stake in Thrive Holdings, a private-equity platform created by Thrive Capital, one of OpenAI’s biggest investors.

The deal is no cash. OpenAI is paying with engineers, models, and deep AI integration into the companies Thrive Holdings buys.

On paper, it looks like another “enterprise AI partnership”. But in reality, what’s interesting here isn’t the deal itself, but the structure behind it and what it enables.

If you’re building or investing in anything that involves enterprise AI, this is worth your time. The model OpenAI and Thrive are using removes a lot of friction most teams struggle with: long sales cycles, slow adoption, and misaligned incentives.

Let’s unpack:

• who Josh Kushner is

• how the OpenAI–Thrive relationship formed

• what this new deal actually enables

• why this model is so dangerous (and attractive) if it works.

• and how you could apply the same structure in any industry

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Who is Josh Kushner and what is Thrive, really?

Joshua Kushner is the founder and managing partner of Thrive Capital, a New York–based VC firm he started in 2010 in his mid-20s.

Thrive has never been loud, but its portfolio speaks for itself.

They were early investor in Instagram, turning a roughly $500 million valuation entry into a 2x when Facebook acquired the company, and over time it has built ownership in some of the most influential companies of the past decade, including Stripe, Spotify, GitHub, Robinhood, Nubank, Oscar Health, A24, and OpenAI.

A few important facts about Thrive:

• $25B+ AUM as of late 2024, off a string of big tech and fintech winners

• Long-only, patient, high-conviction style: fewer bets, bigger checks

• Built out of New York, not the Valley, deliberately low-profile (their site was basically one sentence for years)

Kushner’s whole thing: “don’t be the loudest, be closest to the compounding.”

That philosophy shows up very clearly in how they approached OpenAI.

If you want the full deep dive on Josh Kushner (how he started Thrive at 24 and quietly grew it into one of the most influential investment platforms in tech) we broke it down in detail here: from $5M fund at 24 to $25 billion under management: how Josh Kushner built Thrive

How Thrive became one of OpenAI’s most important investors

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