Shield Technology Partners Announces $100M Investment

Shield Technology Partners has secured a $100 million investment from Thrive Holdings as it looks to accelerate product development and expand its national IT services platform through strategic acquisitions.

The New York-based company positions itself as an AI-first IT services platform, combining engineering and product development with operational support and M&A expertise. 

$100M investment to accelerate AI development and IT services acquisitions

Shield said the new capital will be used to deepen its AI capabilities and broaden its footprint across the U.S. managed services market.

“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,” CEO Jim Siders said in a statement.

Shield said it plans to use the investment to accelerate both internal product innovation and external acquisitions that strengthen its platform and partner ecosystem.

Shield announced its full launch in June 2025, promising to deliver operational efficiencies and an enhanced customer experience to its partners.

“The market for IT services is over $700 billion and evolving rapidly, but the experience for customers has not kept up,” said Jake Sloane, co-founder of Shield Technology Partners, at the time. “Our partners stay awake at night thinking about their customers, and we want to give them the tools to grow their business while preserving what makes them unique.”

Shield collaborates with OpenAI on AI automation tools for IT services

A portion of the investment will support Shield’s engineering organization, which is working alongside OpenAI researchers to develop AI-enabled products designed to automate and streamline common IT service workflows. 

Shield said its internally developed tools are already being deployed across partner environments.

One of those tools, Sentinel, monitors and triages customer support tickets, routing them to the appropriate engineer with the correct priority. 

Another product, Spectre, works alongside engineers by orchestrating AI agents that can resolve specific service requests on their behalf.

AI automation cuts IT ticket resolution times by more than 50%

Shield said the products are already handling some of the most time-intensive categories in IT services, including software and email-related issues, which account for more than 60% of overall ticket volume. 

In certain use cases, the company reported that the median time-to-resolution has been reduced by more than 50%.

IronOrbit, one of Shield’s partners, said the tools helped move forward initiatives that had previously stalled. 

“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,” said Alexander Saca, CEO of IronOrbit.

Shield isn’t the only provider or tech company with its sights set on automating time-intensive tasks, but it is arguably one of the very few with the extensive partnerships of big names like OpenAI and substantial cash flow to support the work.

Shield surpasses $100M in revenue as national IT services platform expands

The investment comes as Shield reports surpassing $100 million in annual revenue in 2025. The company currently partners with nine IT services firms nationwide, collectively serving more than 1,500 customers across industries such as construction, energy, and healthcare.

Thrive Holdings, which co-founded Shield alongside ZBS Partners, said it views specialized AI as a key driver of enterprise adoption. 

“We believe that specialized AI is core to driving enterprise AI adoption,” said Anuj Mehndiratta, a member of the Thrive Holdings founding team. “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.”