Thrive Holdings has agreed to buy ADT for $10.00 a share in cash, valuing the home-security company at about $7.6 billion in equity and $15.3 billion including debt, the two companies announced on Thursday. ADT’s board approved the deal unanimously, and the company will become privately held once the transaction closes, which is expected in the first quarter of 2027. Thrive, a permanent-capital holding company, says ADT will become the foundation of its smart home security business, with its engineers working alongside ADT’s professionals to develop new technology for the company’s customers.
The deal in detail
The $10.00 price represents a premium of 45.6 percent over ADT’s unaffected closing share price of $6.87 on October 27, and 52.1 percent over its 30-day volume-weighted average price to that date, according to the companies’ announcement. The transaction is subject to approval by ADT stockholders and to United States antitrust clearance.
ADT will keep operating independently until the deal closes, and its shares will stop trading on the New York Stock Exchange once it is complete. Financing for the purchase has been committed solely by funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management, and the deal is not subject to a financing condition, the announcement says.
ADT may still solicit competing offers during a 30-day go-shop period running until November 28, with a possible 10-day extension for certain bidders that submit proposals during that window. There is no assurance that the solicitation will produce a better offer, and ADT says it will not disclose developments unless it decides disclosure is appropriate or required.
Why Thrive wants ADT
Thrive Holdings is the permanent-capital vehicle of Thrive Capital, the venture firm founded by Josh Kushner, and it already owns more than 75 businesses across accounting, information technology services and the built environment. The artificial intelligence angle is what makes the deal relevant beyond security.
Unlike a traditional private equity fund with a fixed exit deadline, its structure is designed to hold companies for decades, giving it room to invest in people and products without the pressure of quarterly reporting. That long horizon is central to the pitch for ADT, a company that trades on trust and on recurring relationships with households.
OpenAI counts as both a partner and an investor in Thrive Holdings, and it supplies models and technology as well as forward-deployed engineers to Thrive’s companies. Neither ADT nor Thrive has announced any specific new AI-powered security product yet, so the AI plan is a direction of travel rather than a launch.
Thrive says its engineering teams will work with ADT’s staff to find ways technology can improve products and help frontline teams serve customers more effectively. ADT brings scale that a start-up could not offer quickly: more than 150 years of security history, a nationwide network of professionals, and more than 12,000 employees, according to its chief executive, Jim DeVries.
He said the deal recognises the value built by those employees and delivers an attractive cash premium to stockholders. Kareem Zaki, a partner at Thrive Holdings, said the firm intends to build on ADT’s foundation by strengthening its technology and product capabilities, with capital and patience to invest over decades.
What happens next
ADT will report its third-quarter 2026 results on November 3, before the market opens, but it will not take questions on the accompanying call in light of the announced transaction. The go-shop window runs through November 28, and the closing itself is expected in the first quarter of 2027, subject to the stockholder vote and antitrust approval.
Citi and Goldman Sachs advised ADT, while Evercore advised Thrive Holdings on the deal. On data, the companies have moved to reassure customers early. ADT’s data protection and privacy policies will remain unchanged, and no new data sharing will occur without customer permission, the announcement says.
Anuj Mehndiratta, a partner at Thrive Holdings, said protecting customers’ homes also means protecting their data, and committed the firm to upholding high standards of privacy and cybersecurity for the information customers entrust to ADT. That pledge will matter if Thrive’s engineers gain deeper access to household security data.
Why It Matters
The deal is a test of a particular theory about artificial intelligence: that its biggest near-term value may lie not in new chatbots, but in upgrading established businesses that already own customers, infrastructure and data. Thrive’s model is to buy such companies and inject engineering talent, and ADT, with its monitoring network and household relationships, is its largest such bet yet.
It also sharpens competition in the smart home. Amazon has already pushed its Alexa assistant deeper into the home with new Echo hardware, and Apple has entered home security with partners of its own, so ADT’s new owners will face rivals that can subsidise hardware with larger ecosystems.
The difference for ADT is its human network: installers and responders who visit homes, a channel that pure software rivals do not have. Whether Thrive can turn that network into an AI advantage, rather than just a cost base, is the open question.
If the approach works, expect similar moves in other service-heavy industries where trust and a physical presence are hard to replicate. For investors, the deal is another sign of how much capital is flowing into AI-adjacent assets, following Canada’s backing of Cohere in a $4.5 billion round this week.
The go-shop period gives rival bidders a short window to test whether $10.00 a share is the right price, and the antitrust review will test how regulators view a technology investor taking over a national security network. Both will be watched well beyond the security industry, because they set a precedent for AI investors buying into critical consumer infrastructure.
Background
ADT is a leading provider of security, interactive and smart home solutions for residential and small business customers in the United States, and Thrive Holdings owns and operates businesses in critical industries, deploying proprietary technology products within the companies it owns.
Source: ADT announcement and Reuters report
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