Private equity’s rush into law and accounting is running into a new question: What happens to a roll-up strategy built on professional labor when artificial intelligence starts doing more of the work?
Accounting Firms Face a Productivity Test as Demand Outruns Capacity.
Accountants Demand Index: Steady Growth in New Work
Forecast: After steady expansion, the index predicts a decline in December, followed by a sharp advance in January 2027
By CPA Trendlines Research
The tax and accounting profession’s biggest problem is no longer finding work. It is finding the time, people, and technology to do it.
The new CPA Trendlines Accountants Demand Index, which slipped in May, remains firmly above year-ago levels. The proprietary index of economic indicators fell to 121.2 in May, down 0.3 percent from April but still up 1.8 percent from a year earlier and comfortably above its 2019 baseline level of 100.
The next six months are forecast to follow a pattern firm owners will recognize. June softens. July surges with the sharpest single-month gain in the forecast window. Then August stalls, nearly flat, which is where the index makes its call.
History says late summer is the reset. This year, the data says the reset holds: the index climbs steadily through September, October and into November, reaching its fall peak before December pulls it back below zero.
On the agenda: Consolidation, ethics, AI, and talent.
By CPA Trendlines
The CPA profession arrives at its biggest annual gathering this month, carrying two truths that refuse to sit comfortably together: It has never been worth more money. And it has never been less sure of what it is becoming.
AICPA and CIMA convene ENGAGE 2026 at the ARIA in Las Vegas, June 8 through 11 and the 10th-anniversary theme — “The Next Wave: A Decade of Possibility Starts Now” — markets the milestone while signaling the unease beneath it.
CPAs Not Wanted: Firms Build a New Workforce – without Accountants
CPA firms have added just 3,930 accountants and auditors in the last five years, far fewer than the expansions in sales, finance, technology, project management and data science.
By CPA Trendlines
Cornerstone Report
CPA firms are building a new workforce, and they’re doing it without CPAs.
Firms are hiring thousands of new staffers in jobs that look less like traditional accounting and more like sales, systems and management, according to new data parsed by CPA Trendlines.
The public accounting profession has added 3,930 accountant and auditor positions since 2021, which pales in comparison to the 12,250 new sales representatives, 11,140 new financial managers, or 8,130 new computer and information systems managers. Firms added 4,370 new software developers and 4,190 new project management specialists. They also added 2,210 new data scientists. Even the number of chief executives has grown faster.
The pattern shows firms are not simply replacing missing CPAs and CPA candidates. They are building a different kind of firm, with more people assigned to sell services, manage clients, run systems, build software and coordinate projects. CPAs need not apply. READ MORE →
Prove It: PE-Backed Firms Must Now Deliver on Their Big Strategies
CPA Trendlines CPA-PE Deal Tracker™ — May 2026
Target
Platform/Buyer
Sponsor
Funding
Strategy
Jackson Thornton
Ascend
Alpine Investors
PE-backed
Wealth management, Gulf Coast expansion
Jefferson Wells U.S.
Sikich
Bain Capital involvement
Institutionally backed
Consulting and staffing capabilities
Copeland Buhl
Frazier & Deeter
General Atlantic
PE-backed
First Midwest footprint
Price Kong
Aprio
Charlesbank
PE-backed
Arizona and cannabis specialization
SWKJD
Citrin Cooperman
Blackstone
PE-backed
South Florida expansion
Gorfine Schiller & Gardyn
Sorren
DFW Capital
PE-backed
Mid-Atlantic expansion
Gordon Advisors
Cohen & Co.
Lovell Minnick
PE-backed
Michigan expansion
ArightCo
Abbott Stringham & Lynch
—
Conventional M&A
CAS and fractional CFO scaling
ASO Advisors
Windsor Path
Family-office backed
Private capital
Platform’s second deal
GBC Advisory
Springline Advisory
Trinity Hunt Partners
PE-backed
Oklahoma expansion
MCA Connect
Grant Thornton Advisors
New Mountain Capital
PE-backed
AI and digital transformation
Burke & Associates
Platform Accounting Group / Shoreline
Cynosure Group
Private capital
Massachusetts expansion
Of the month’s notable deals, 10 are funded by outside capital, led by Grant Thornton’s deal for a tech consultancy and Sikich’s for a staffing service.
Half “decidedly opposed” and the other half in favor, in talks or done. (CPA Trendlines Research)
By CPA Trendlines
Marking a new phase in the private equity takeover of the CPA business, the next test for accounting platforms will be proving that serial acquisitions can be converted into integrated firms, not just larger collections of offices, partners and legacy systems.
Call it: The Implementation Imperative. It’s the place where grand schemes on paper meet the concrete realities of running a business. The first phase was acquisition. The second was consolidation. The next is all about making it work.
The May 2026 edition of the CPA Trendlines CPA-PE Deal Tracker™ illustrates the change. And a CPA Trendlines survey in April shows 44% of accountants are eager, open or already closed on a deal.
Venture capital crashes the private equity party in accounting.
Consolidation constellation: Sponsors in blue, platforms in red, targets in gold.
By CPA Trendlines Research
The CPA Trendlines CPA PE Deal Tracker™ shows the steep rise in deal flow, hitting more than 450.
Private equity’s push into accounting is entering a new and more complicated phase: platform building, sponsor recycling, technology investments, blended tax and wealth services — and now, a new pipeline of cash from venture capital.
This month’s CPA Trendlines CPA-PE Deal Tracker™ shows nine new deals in April, down from the first-quarter deal-closing frenzy but bringing the year-to-date deal count through April 30 to 78, well ahead of the 44 logged in the same window of 2025.
The broader verified dataset now includes 452 in-scope events, giving CPA Trendlines a clearer view of what private capital is doing after its first wave of accounting-firm investments.
The latest data does not show a retreat. It shows a transformation. The new gambits go well beyond roll-ups, and include service line extensions, corporate carve-outs, cross-industry tie-ups, recapitalizations, continuations and a buzzy new venture-backed startup.
World domination
The deal models are sprawling in all directions as big money battles for a dwindling number of prime firms and squeezes for synergies in the firms they’ve acquired.
In the mix, accounting is morphing from a profession into a platform. A launchpad from which to sell a growing, and traditionally conflict-laden, range of products and services. From tax planning to wealth management, from outsourced accounting systems to internal audit, and from risk management to insurance sales.
A once incongruous, even contradictory, collection of services are being acquired, aligned and advanced. The ambition is market encirclement. The impulse is world domination.
CPA firm leaders must act decisively on technology, talent strategy and long-term identity or risk falling behind in a rapidly evolving marketplace, Lexy Kessler, Chair of the AICPA and a partner at Aprio, tells JJean Caragher in a new episode of Gear Up for Growth.
Revenue expectations held through the season, while profit expectations declined sharply, creating today’s widening margin gap. (CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer 2026)
By CPA Trendlines
Across every major metric, CPA Trendlines is finding the same pattern: Firms are doing more work and generating more revenue — but keeping less of it.
The dynamic was unearthed in gory detail by the Busy Season Barometer. fron-inr \isteb=ning from The Busy Season Barometer. The numbers through tax season didn’t break all at once. Instead, they had been drifting apart. READ MORE →
The 30-point swing: Accountants close the season feeling slightly negative, at minus 1.8, a collapse of more than 30 points.
The Busy Season Barometer Shows Exactly When—and Why.
By CPA Trendlines
After starting near historic highs, sentiment among tax professionals fell more than 30 points by April, as workload, client behavior and system failures overwhelmed expectations.
By December, sentiment among tax professionals had climbed to a positive 29.8—the strongest reading in the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer cycle. A majority expected better conditions. Few anticipated what came next.
By April, that optimism had vanished.
Accountant attitudes closed the season slightly negative, around -1 to -1.8, marking a swing of more than 30 points in four months.
It was one of the sharpest same-season reversals in the Barometer’s 24-year history, and it followed a pattern practitioners have seen before: expectations rising in the fall, then breaking under the weight of the season itself.
The difference in 2026 was the speed—and the causes.
Across every major metric, CPA Trendlines is finding the same pattern: Firms are doing more work and generating more revenue — but keeping less of it.