Only 2 of 46 AI Rollup Firms Get an A Grade: Vista and Apollo Top the Map
curious_vii · x · 2026-09-24
A Space and market map graded 46 AI rollup platforms on public evidence: only old-school PE firms Vista and Apollo earned an A, while 38 newer platforms sit at B or C.
- Software multiples, PE capital stacks: Thrive Holdings raised $2B at $12B; OpenAI Deployment Co. backers reportedly get a 17.5% annual floor; Sequence plus the Dell family office took Baldwin private at $7.7B (20x adj. EBITDA).
- Alpha or levered beta? A live poll split the panel — several said mostly levered beta, others mostly alpha; nobody agreed.
- Thrive, ranked top, was framed as a "vassal state for OpenAI researchers": buy real businesses, turn them into RL environments, feed data distributions back to the lab.
- Harsh grading: 5 downgrades and 1 upgrade since launch; the fastest path to an A is one client publishing one number in its own name — demos and "AI OS" decks don't count.
- Two pressure tests: the best rollup targets sit on high-entropy information streams (fast-decaying know-how must be owned, not rented), and durable rents may live in complements to intelligence — brand, access, rights to act — not in anything inside the token stream.
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