breaking / Acquisitions

🚨 An AI Holding Company Just Agreed to Buy ADT for $15.3 Billion

Thrive Holdings will pay $10 a share in cash for ADT, a $15.3B deal backed by Apollo financing. Here's what it means.

By Tech Arcade··2 min read

An AI Holding Company Just Agreed to Buy ADT for $15.3 Billion — Tech Arcade
Photo: Alan J. Hendry / Unsplash

Thrive Holdings, the company Josh Kushner set up to buy businesses and rebuild them with AI, just agreed to take home-security giant ADT private in a deal worth $15.3 billion including debt (GlobeNewswire).

ADT shareholders get $10.00 a share in cash, a 45.6% premium to the $6.87 the stock closed at on October 27. That values the equity at about $7.6 billion. The announcement landed at 9:20 a.m. ET on Thursday, October 29.

Up to now, Thrive has mostly bought accounting firms and IT shops. This is its biggest swing yet, and its first step into homes.

⚡ What Happened

  • Price: $10.00 per share, all cash. That’s 52.1% above ADT’s 30-day average price (GlobeNewswire).
  • Money: Funds managed by Apollo are providing all the financing, and the deal has no financing condition.
  • Approvals: ADT’s board voted unanimously for it. Shareholders and US antitrust regulators still have to sign off, and closing is expected in Q1 2027.
  • Escape hatch: ADT has a 30-day “go-shop” until November 28 to look for a better offer.

ADT will become the core of a new Thrive smart-home security business. The company says its data and privacy policies won’t change, and no new data sharing will happen without customer permission.

🧠 Why It Matters

Thrive Holdings isn’t a normal buyout firm. Kushner spun it out of Thrive Capital, one of OpenAI’s biggest backers, in 2025. OpenAI took a stake in it in December 2025, and OpenAI staff work inside its companies (The Next Web).

The playbook: buy service businesses outright instead of selling them software, then plug engineers in alongside the people already doing the work. In August, Thrive raised more than $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation from SoftBank, D1 and Altimeter to do more of it.

ADT is a very different target from a local accounting firm. It has more than 12,000 employees, the largest network of smart-home security professionals in the US, and an enormous amount of data about people’s homes. If you’re an ADT customer, that privacy pledge is the line worth holding them to.

🔜 What To Watch

  • The go-shop. If another bidder tops $10 a share before November 28, this gets interesting.
  • November 3. ADT reports Q3 results before the market opens, but it says it won’t take questions on the call.
  • Antitrust. US regulators have to approve the deal.
  • The AI plan. The announcement talks about “technology opportunities” but gives no specifics on AI.

Key details are still emerging, including how Thrive plans to use AI at ADT.

Sources

❓ Quick answers

Who is buying ADT?

Thrive Holdings, a holding company spun out of Josh Kushner's Thrive Capital, agreed on October 29, 2026 to acquire ADT for $10.00 per share in cash (ADT press release).

How much is the ADT deal worth?

About $7.6 billion in equity value and $15.3 billion in enterprise value, a 45.6% premium to ADT's October 27 close of $6.87 (ADT press release, Oct 29, 2026).

When will the ADT acquisition close?

ADT expects it to close in the first quarter of 2027, subject to shareholder and US antitrust approval. ADT can seek better offers until November 28, 2026.