ADT's $15.3B Enterprise Value: Inside Thrive Holdings' All-Cash Take-Private Deal

Thrive Holdings, the permanent-capital investment vehicle backed by venture firm Thrive Capital, agreed on October 29, 2026 to acquire ADT in an all-cash deal valuing the home-security company at $15.3 billion in enterprise value — roughly $7.6 billion in equity plus the debt Thrive Holdings is assuming — with ADT shareholders set to receive $10.00 per share, a 45.6% premium to the stock's prior closing price. The entire $7.6 billion equity check is being written by funds managed by Apollo Global Management, with no financing condition attached, and the deal is expected to close in Q1 2027.

ADT's own announcement, filed with the SEC on October 29, 2026, frames this as a take-private of a 150-year-old brand by a buyer most people associate with venture-backed startups rather than mature, monitoring-contract businesses.

What Is ADT, and Why Is Thrive Holdings Buying It in 2026?

ADT describes itself in its SEC filing as a leading provider of security, interactive and smart-home solutions for residential and small-business customers across the U.S., serving about 6.1 million monitoring subscribers at the end of 2025. The company is headquartered at 1501 Yamato Road in Boca Raton, Florida, making it one of the largest publicly traded companies based in South Florida — a region we track separately on our South Florida funding tracker, though ADT itself is a decades-old public company rather than a venture-backed startup.

Thrive Holdings is a permanent-capital vehicle formed by Thrive Capital, the venture firm best known for early bets on Instagram and Stripe, and in the 2020s, OpenAI. Unlike a traditional private-equity fund, a permanent-capital vehicle is built to hold businesses indefinitely rather than exit them on a fund-life timeline — Thrive Holdings' other holdings include an accounting business (Current) and an IT-services business (Shield), per its own description in the deal filing. Partner Kareem Zaki said in the announcement that "ADT has spent generations showing up for people when it matters most," while partner Anuj Mehndiratta framed the logic as data protection: "Protecting customers' homes also means protecting their data."

ADT's $15.3 Billion Deal, Line by Line

Every figure below comes from ADT's October 29, 2026 SEC filing and the related financing disclosure filed the same day.

How we counted: terms as disclosed in ADT's Form 8-K exhibit and DEFA14A filed with the SEC on October 29, 2026; 10 deal terms; as of October 30, 2026.

Is $15.3 Billion ADT's "Valuation"?

Not in the sense that word is usually used for a startup funding round. Enterprise value adds the debt a buyer assumes on top of what it pays shareholders, which is why ADT's $15.3 billion enterprise value is roughly double its $7.6 billion equity value — the cash price ($10.00 a share) times its shares outstanding. The equity figure is the closer analogue to a typical "valuation," and it's the one that matches what ADT shareholders actually receive.

Who Is Financing the ADT Deal, and Why Apollo Global Management?

Apollo Global Management funds are the sole source of financing for the Thrive Holdings deal, with no financing condition attached, according to the related SEC filing. That's a notable return: Apollo took ADT private itself in 2016, brought it back to public markets in 2018, and sold its remaining ADT stake in May 2026, per SecurityInfoWatch's reporting — months before agreeing to bankroll a different buyer's take-private of the same company.

Citi and Goldman Sachs are ADT's financial advisors, with Cravath, Swaine & Moore as its legal counsel; Evercore is advising Thrive Holdings on an exclusive basis, with Kirkland & Ellis as its legal counsel, per the SEC filing.

Who Is Thrive Holdings, and How Does It Connect to Thrive Capital?

The ADT deal lands just eleven weeks after Thrive Holdings closed a $2 billion fundraise in August 2026 from existing institutional partners and new outside investors including D1 Capital Partners, Altimeter Capital, and SoftBank. That raise's OpenAI-adjacent investor base — several of the same names have backed OpenAI directly or through adjacent vehicles — made the ADT deal the clearest evidence yet of how quickly that new capital is being deployed outside of AI labs. You can read how Thrive Capital built its $10B+ AUM for more on Josh Kushner's firm.

The ADT acquisition is also one entry in a much bigger 2026 M&A cycle — see our breakdown of why tech M&A hit records in 2026 for how it stacks up against SpaceX's $250 billion purchase of xAI and Google's $32 billion deal for Wiz.

How Is ADT Performing Financially Ahead of the Deal?

ADT reported $5,129 million in total revenue for full-year 2025, up 5% from $4,898 million in 2024, with monitoring and related services revenue of $4,354 million, up 1% from $4,293 million, according to its Q4 2025 earnings release. Adjusted EBITDA was $2,680 million in 2025 (a 52% margin) versus $2,578 million in 2024. The company carried about $7.8 billion in face-value debt and $9.7 billion in goodwill and intangible assets as of December 31, 2025, per its 10-K.

Growth has slowed on the customer side: gross customer revenue attrition rose to 13.1% in 2025 from 12.7% in 2024, which ADT attributed mainly to higher non-payment and voluntary disconnects, and end-of-period recurring monthly revenue was flat at $359 million. In September 2025, ADT sold its B2B multifamily business, covering about 200,000 customer units, to Everon for $55 million in cash.

What the headline misses

"Agreed to acquire" is not "closed." ADT's 30-day go-shop period, running to November 28, 2026, leaves room for a competing bidder to emerge before the deal becomes exclusive, and closing still requires both stockholder and U.S. antitrust approval, with a targeted Q1 2027 close. There's also a structural critique worth naming: permanent-capital vehicles like Thrive Holdings face none of a traditional private-equity fund's pressure to exit within a set hold period, which critics argue lets them pay full price — a 45.6% premium — for a mature, slow-growing, monitoring-contract business whose customer attrition is already rising and which faces continued pressure from DIY smart-home competitors that undercut ADT's professionally monitored, contract-based model with self-installed hardware and no long-term commitment.

The Bottom Line

ADT's deal with Thrive Holdings is priced at $15.3 billion in enterprise value — $7.6 billion in equity, financed entirely by Apollo Global Management funds, at a 45.6% premium to where the stock was trading before the announcement. It's a notable entry for a venture firm's permanent-capital arm just eleven weeks after raising $2 billion from a roster of investors more associated with AI bets than home-security monitoring contracts, and it's a reminder that 2026's M&A boom isn't limited to AI infrastructure megadeals. Whether it closes as announced, in Q1 2027, or draws a competing bid during the go-shop window, is the open question through November.