Shield Technology Partners announced it has raised a $100 million in investment from Thrive Holdings to accelerate product development and support additional acquisitions as it expands a national platform of IT services businesses.
The company positioned the funding as fuel for building an AI-first IT services model that combines software and engineering with operational support and M&A execution. Shield said a portion of the capital will support its engineering team, which is working alongside OpenAI researchers to develop and embed AI-enabled products to improve IT engineer productivity and free teams to focus on higher-value work.
Shield highlighted two internal products designed to streamline service delivery. The company said Sentinel monitors and triages customer tickets, routing each issue to the right engineer with appropriate timing and priority, while Spectre is built to help engineers orchestrate multiple agents to resolve specific requests on their behalf. Shield said these tools have been deployed across complex, time-consuming ticket categories, including software and email issues, which it said account for more than 60% of overall ticket volume. For several tasks, Shield said the products have reduced median time to resolution by more than half.
The announcement also emphasized a partner model. Shield said it currently partners with nine IT services companies across the U.S., serving more than 1,500 customers in sectors including construction, energy, and healthcare. The company added that it surpassed $100 million in annual revenue in 2025 and that the new capital will support continued expansion of its platform.
Shield described itself as a national IT services platform formed through a collaboration between Thrive Holdings and ZBS Partners, and said its strategy focuses on combining technology expertise with support for founder-led businesses to drive growth and long-term value creation. Thrive Holdings, in turn, said it takes a long-term approach to investing in established businesses in critical industries and is currently focused on accounting and IT services.
KEY QUOTES
“Every business, regardless of size, should have access to world-class IT that powers them rather than holding them back. This investment allows Shield to double down on building an AI-first IT services platform, equipping our partners with the capabilities and resources they need to create long-term value and competitive advantage for the businesses they serve.”
Jim Siders, CEO of Shield
“AI is transforming everything — how we work, how we operate, how we serve customers. Shield’s work in building AI-driven products are initiatives that we had envisioned but didn’t have the expertise or bandwidth to execute.”
Alexander Saca, CEO of IronOrbit, one of Shield’s partners
“We believe that specialized AI is core to driving enterprise AI adoption. Shield’s unique model aligns incentives across the people building the technology with those using it in a way that we think will be very powerful at scale.”
Anuj Mehndiratta, a member of the Thrive Holdings founding team
