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?
Before Rolling Up CPA Firms, Current’s CEO Built a Retail Empire on Acquisitions — Then Watched It Buckle.
Stagner: Will formulas from mattress retailers and veterinarians work for CPA firms?
By CPA Trendlines Research
Steve Stagner now runs Current, the accounting platform that has gathered more than 40 firms in roughly three years under backing from Thrive Holdings and describes its holding period as effectively permanent.
But before he arrived in the profession, Stagner spent a 23-year run building, taking public, selling and then rescuing the largest mattress retailer in the United States — a company whose climb and near-collapse trace almost entirely to the same instinct now reshaping the accounting business: growth by acquisition.
KKR, the global investment firm synonymous with “leveraged buyout,” is taking a majority stake in Crowe, 12th on the top 100 lists, for $2.5 billion to $3 billion, including $1 billion in debt.
Meanwhile, the Tampa-based platform Crete Professionals Alliance is renaming itself Current and confirming that backer Thrive Holdings is earmarking up to $1 billion to roll up dozens of small and midsize local firms.
Each set of investors is deploying $1 billion or more, but with very different theses. The fact that the market is supporting both suggests the market hasn’t decided which is the better strategy. READ MORE →
Most CPAs are concerned that private equity is undermining the CPA profession’s reputation for independence and objectivity. Only 10% say PE will have little or no impact. Fewer still can say PE will improve client service. (CPA Trendlines)
By CPA Trendlines
It’s a toss-up between CPAs opposed to PE and those unopposed. (CPA Trendlines)
As the CPA Trendlines CPA PE Deal Tracker™ adds 13 more closings for the month of May, a new survey shows accountants worrying about PE tarnishing the image and reputation of the profession. But half say they might take the money anyway.
The CPA PE Deal Tracker™ now contains more than 500 headline deals and developments. Through May 31, the tracker shows 91 headline 2026 events, including 83 M&A deals. Full-year 2025 finished with 190 significant events, including 178 M&A deals. The last three consecutive months have produced the first sustained plateau in 12-month trailing M&A activity since the acceleration phase that began in 2023.
Meanwhile, nearly half of the professionals in the new CPA Trendlines survey — 49.5 percent — describe themselves as decidedly opposed to private equity investment: fiercely independent, not interested, never ever.
The rest, a bare but discernible majority, are not. They would do a deal for the right price. Or they are already in play. Or have already done a deal.
“It only makes sense to keep our options open,” says Michael Royer of Royer Advisors and Accountants in Falmouth, Maine. He is not opposed, and he is not sold, adding “it’s still a personal business — and we don’t know the full impact of AI.”
The CPA PE Deal Tracker™ from CPA Trendlines Research now follows 525 events, including 473 acquired firms, across about 72 platforms and 69 capital sources. All reaching back to 2016.
The consolidation now represents $49 billion in transacted enterprise value, on about $24 billion in annual revenue and close to 96,000 working accountants and staff.
Gear Up for Growth With Jean Caragher For CPA Trendlines
On the latest episode of “Gear Up for Growth,” host Jean Caragher interviews Matt Rampe, partner at Rosenberg Associates and author of the forthcoming book, “CPA Firm Strategic Planning: Your Roadmap for Long-Term Success,” about how accounting firms can move beyond ad-hoc retreats to a disciplined, accountable planning process that sticks.
Rampe, who advises firms on strategy, succession, partner development, and profitability, said the book grew out of years of facilitation and coaching with firms of all sizes. “The book was in my brain for a long time before it got put on paper,” he says. “When I started writing, it actually came pretty quickly—but I learned there’s a lot more to making a book than a Word document.”
Rampe argues that the profession has reached a disruption point, citing converging pressures including private equity, technology, staffing shortages, succession for retiring Baby Boomers, and a shift toward advisory services. “What worked for us 10 years ago isn’t going to work for us 10 years in the future,” he says. “The old model, where a few partners disappear into a room and come out with a plan, doesn’t work in this age. We need to be nimble.”
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.
You’re building momentum! If you were in an airplane, you’d be at about 10,000 feet and climbing rapidly toward your highest altitude. In the Imagine stage, we’ll take it all the way to 30,000 feet, where the big picture emerges clearly for all to see.
If the Identify stage is about who we are and why we exist as a firm, Imagine is the exciting part where we create alignment around where we want to go together. READ MORE →
Private equity isn’t just buying CPA firms. It’s rebuilding them—starting with the tech stack.
By CPA Trendlines Research
From ERP systems to AI-powered audit tools, PE-backed accounting platforms are undergoing technology overhauls at a pace never before seen in the profession. The result is a widening gap between capitalized firms and traditional partnerships still running legacy software.
In CPA Trendlines’ benchmark dataset, independent firms average about 4% of revenue on technology, versus about 10% at PE-backed platforms.
The logic is clear: better technology means faster service delivery, lower costs, and more data-driven decisions. For private equity investors, that translates directly into EBITDA expansion—and higher exit multiples.
