On September 24, 2026, Thrive Holdings and ZBS Partners backed Shield Technology Partners in launching Forge, and simultaneously announced that Miami’s Nerds Support became its 20 partner. Shield currently provides network services to over 3,750 enterprises. Its existing M&A model involves acquiring roughly 60%—90% of a regional MSP’s equity, retaining the founding team to continue local operations, and then deploying shared technology to the combined companies via central engineering and operations capabilities; the announcement did not disclose Nerds Support’s specific ownership stake or transaction price.
Fact: expanded from 9 MSPs to the 20th, with AI beginning to take over service delivery directly.
- Shield disclosed on February 2026 that Thrive Holdings added an investment of USD 100,000,000 for product innovation and strategic acquisitions; at that time the platform had 9 partner companies, serving 1,500+ customers, with 2025 revenue exceeding USD 100,000,000. The latest announcement on September 24 shows partners have grown to 20, serving over 3,750 enterprises.
- Forge’s Helpdesk AI Engineer can handle the entire workflow from ticket intake to closure. Shield disclosed that Forge currently resolves 50% of executable helpdesk tickets, with 92% of those resolutions requiring neither human approval nor recording of technician hours. For comparable tickets, Forge processes at 25 times the speed of technicians, with a median resolution time of 16 minutes.
- The company further disclosed on September 24 that the AI Account Manager, launched in 7 month, increased the number of customers reached by the user team by 10%; the combined companies have deployed over 150 agents and 750 skills in production, with daily runs approaching 30 instances over the most recent 4,000‑day period.
- Among the specific combined companies, the founding team of NetAscendant estimates that Forge frees up about 25% additional customer service capacity; Exigent Technologies saw ticket backlog drop by 80%. These metrics come from Shield and the combined companies’ own statements and have not been independently audited.
- Shield publicly explained that its typical partnership structure involves acquiring roughly 60%—90% of an MSP’s equity while allowing original shareholders to retain local equity, branding, and operational responsibilities. The 2025 Wall Street Journal also confirmed that Shield had already acquired 4 IT service companies at launch. The specific equity stake for Nerds Support in this transaction was not disclosed.
Judgment: the compounding source of the roll-up begins to extend from procurement and back‑office coordination to shared AI runtime
Shield demonstrates a verifiable AI‑native roll‑up path: the holding company’s acquisition retains local operating knowledge, the central engineering team consolidates work orders, SOPs, client accounts and project experience from multiple MSPs into a single runtime environment, and then reuses the resulting agents, skills and runbooks across companies. Each time a new MSP is added, the platform simultaneously adds customers, workflows and professional‑knowledge samples. The currently public results have already touched unit productivity and service capacity: automatically resolved work orders reduce technician input, and the freed time is reallocated to complex issues, proactive client service and account growth. If these metrics can be stably replicated across portfolios, the transmission path will also cover delivery costs, unit employee service capacity and same‑store revenue; Shield has not disclosed the EBITDA increment attributable to Forge, so the overall platform growth cannot be directly attributed to AI.
Counter‑evidence and evidence boundaries
- Forge’s 50% automatic resolution rate, 92% no‑human approval, 25‑fold processing speed, 25% capacity increase and 80% backlog reduction all come from disclosures by Shield or its subsidiaries, and no independent third‑party comparison or audit has been found to date.
- Shield’s publicly stated 60%‑90% shareholding range describes its general partnership model; the Nerds Support transaction did not disclose the equity percentage, purchase price or closing terms, so no conclusion can be drawn about the specific control proportion of the deal.
- Existing data mainly measures work orders and service capacity, and has not disclosed gross margin, EBITDA, customer retention, ARPU or before‑and‑after same‑store revenue; whether AI improvements can be translated into long‑term profit and valuation gains remains to be verified by subsequent financial disclosures.
Shield Technology Partners，Forge: Building for IT Services from the Inside Out（2026-09-24）
Shield Technology Partners，Forge | The AI-First Operating System for IT Services
Shield Technology Partners，Shield Raises $100 Million From Thrive Holdings（2026-02-02）
Shield Technology Partners / CRN，Shield acquires 60 to 90 percent of an MSP’s equity（2025-06-20）