Who Is Buying Accounting Firms in 2026? Private Equity, AI Roll-Ups, and Hybrid Buyers

Three groups are buying accounting firms in 2026: private equity, which has taken stakes in 11 of the 30 largest US firms and invested more than $50 billion in CPA firms over the past six years (KPMG Corporate Finance); venture-backed AI-native roll-ups such as Current, Multiplier, and Modus; and the traditional market of individual CPA buyers, where most firms under $2 million in revenue still sell. Each group targets a different firm size, pays on a different basis, and asks a different thing of the owner.

Key takeaways:

• 11 of the top 30 US accounting firms had PE investment as of Q3 2025, and KPMG Corporate Finance expects over half of the top 30 to be PE-backed; $50B+ has flowed into CPA firms in six years
• PE's stated target zone is firms with $2M–$50M in revenue (Rosenberg Survey interviews); below that, deals go to individual buyers and roll-ups
• AI-native buyers are real and funded: Current (Thrive Holdings, OpenAI partnership) planned a $500M two-year acquisition budget, Multiplier has raised $62.5M and bought 8 firms, Modus raised $85M for audit-first deals
• The market has entered its flip era: Citrin Cooperman sold to New Mountain at 11x EBITDA in 2022 and flipped to Blackstone at roughly 15x in 2025
• A PE deal pays partners through a compensation "scrape" converted to EBITDA at a 7–11x multiple, plus rollover equity for a second payday at the next sale

Save this cheat sheet — the buyer map in one image.

Jupid is one of these buyers: we run a hybrid roll-up that buys the routine production of CPA firms while the owner keeps the client relationships. If you're weighing your options, book a 30-minute call.

The Three Markets Buying Accounting Firms in 2026

The phrase "buyers of accounting firms" now covers three markets that barely overlap. Private equity buys firms large enough to underwrite on EBITDA. AI-native roll-ups buy mid-sized and smaller firms whose production work they believe automation can make dramatically more profitable. And the traditional market, individual CPAs and small local acquirers, still absorbs most practices below $2 million in revenue, priced on gross multiples and client retention.

Sort Yourself Into the Right Buyer Conversation

Why Everyone Suddenly Wants to Buy an Accounting Firm

The demand has one financial root and two demographic ones. The financial root is the revenue itself: audit and tax compliance produce what Financial Executives International calls an "annuity-like income stream," stable, recurring, and paid by clients who rarely switch. Layer advisory growth on top and the profile looks like software economics with none of the customer-acquisition cost.

The demographic roots are on the seller side. The AICPA's practice-management survey found 57% of multi-owner firms had no written succession plan, and 44% of solo practitioners planned to retire within five years (PCPS survey, 2016 vintage, and the cohort has only aged since). Meanwhile the replacement pipeline thinned: US accounting degrees fell 6.6% in the 2023–24 academic year to 55,152, and new CPA exam candidates dropped from 42,626 in 2023 to 28,082 in 2024, per the AICPA's 2025 Trends report. Spring 2025 enrollment finally turned up 12.4%, the first real countertrend since 2020, but a graduating class takes years to become a partner buyout.

KPMG Corporate Finance names the same three levers from the buyer's chair: a fragmented sector of 46,000 to 52,200 US CPA firms suited to buy-and-build, "the succession dilemma inherent in the accounting partnership model," and the shortage of qualified accountants that scale and technology help absorb. A buyer who solves succession and staffing does not have to win clients; the clients are already there.

Private Equity Is Buying Accounting Firms: The Deal List

Private equity's run at the profession started in August 2021, when TowerBrook Capital Partners took a stake in EisnerAmper, the first PE deal with a top-20 firm. Every deal since has followed the same regulatory template: the firm splits into a CPA-owned attest entity and an advisory entity the investor can own, the alternative practice structure. The verified milestones:

KPMG's deal tracker adds Armanino (Further Global, 2024) and the Baker Tilly–Moss Adams combination (2025) to the list, and Alpine Investors' Ascend has been running a keep-your-brand platform for $10M–$50M regional firms since January 2023.

The market has also entered its second phase: PE selling to PE. Citrin Cooperman became the profession's first flip in January 2025, when New Mountain sold its stake to Blackstone at roughly 15x EBITDA against the 11x it paid, after revenue grew from $315 million toward a projected $850 million. Schellman, the 2021 Lightyear deal, flipped to Goldman Sachs Alternatives in 2026. Deal adviser Allan Koltin expects more flips in 2027 than 2026 "and a lot more in 2028," with PE now focused on what he calls the middleweights, firms with $75 million to $400 million in revenue.

The New Wave: AI-Native Roll-Ups

The newest buyers were built around a single thesis: AI can automate enough of the production work inside an accounting firm to change its margins, so owning firms beats selling them software. The capital behind the thesis is institutional. General Catalyst raised a dedicated $1.5 billion "Creation" vehicle in 2024 for exactly this playbook across industries; its Long Lake platform has acquired 30 businesses since 2023, and the strategy's showcase deal is the $6.3 billion take-private of Amex Global Business Travel in 2026.

Multiplier's founder Noah Pepper, who previously ran Stripe's Asia-Pacific business, describes the model plainly: recent AI advances let firms automate the preparatory and administrative work while human experts keep the advice and the client relationships. One clarification worth making, because the coverage blurs it: Accrual, the General Catalyst-backed startup that launched with $75 million in February 2026, sells AI tax software to firms like H&R Block and Armanino; it does not buy firms. The buying and the tooling are two halves of the same thesis, and the tooling side is a market of its own; our guide to AI agents for accounting firms maps what that software actually does inside a practice.

Every margin number in the table above is a company claim, not audited data. But the direction is consistent with what the broader 2026 accounting trends show: the production layer of the profession is getting cheaper to run, and buyers are paying for the right to run it.

What a Sale Actually Looks Like for the Partner

A PE deal pays a partner in three currencies, as The CPA Journal's 2026 analysis lays out: cash up front, deferred payouts or earnouts, and rollover equity in the PE-backed management company, the "second bite of the apple" that pays out when the investor exits. Because non-CPAs cannot own an audit practice, every deal routes through the split structure described above.

The mechanics of the price are the part most owners have never seen, and Allan Koltin describes them bluntly: "Accounting firms have zero EBITDA; they clear out the register every year." The EBITDA that gets a multiple is manufactured through what he calls the scrape of partner compensation. A partner making $1.2 million agrees to live on $800,000; the $400,000 difference becomes EBITDA, priced at 7x to 11x, and paid as capital gain. His summary of the reception: "Partners 55 and older love it. Partners who are 35 are not so sure."

The costs are real too, and the profession is candid about them. The CPA Journal analysis warns that partner compensation drops significantly post-closing and that PE reporting discipline is "illuminating and exhausting." An Inside Public Accounting survey in 2025 found firm leaders split on the whole phenomenon: 39% said PE raises the competitive bar, 23% called it a negative force, nearly half said it has hurt morale. And the audit regulator has entered the conversation: PCAOB acting chair George Botic warned in October 2025 that investor return pressure carries "significant risk" for audit quality through thinner engagement staffing and looser client acceptance.

What PE Interest Does NOT Mean for a Small Firm

• Headline multiples do not transfer. The 11x and 15x figures are EBITDA multiples on nine-figure-revenue platforms. A $900,000 practice is priced on a gross revenue multiple, typically around 1x; the full math lives in our CPA firm valuation guide.
• An inbound email from a "PE-backed buyer" is not a PE deal. PE firms told the Rosenberg Survey they target $2M–$50M revenue firms. Below that line, the counterpart is an aggregator's development office, a broker, or an individual buyer.
• The wave is young at small-firm scale. Sorren's Jason Kadow estimates 5% of the top 2,000 US firms have PE today and predicts over 50% within five years. Prediction, not present tense.

Questions to Ask Any Buyer Before You Sign

Jupid sits on the buyer side of this market, and the pattern in our conversations with owners is that the sharpest questions come from sellers who asked about structure before price. The list we would want to answer if we were selling:

• What is your hold period, and what happens to my equity and my clients at the flip?
• How much of my income becomes the compensation scrape, and what do I earn per year after closing?
• Which of my staff do you keep, and under what terms?
• What exactly is contingent: retention clause, earnout, escrow, and over how many years?
• Who owns the client relationships on paper after closing, and what am I signing a noncompete against?
• If your model is AI-driven, what specifically gets automated in my book, and what happened at the last firm you bought?

A buyer who answers these precisely is pricing your firm. A buyer who answers with a headline multiple is pricing your attention.

A Deal Where You Keep the Clients: Jupid's Hybrid Roll-Up

Most structures in this article assume the owner eventually leaves. Jupid is building the alternative: a hybrid roll-up for CPA firms, where we buy and run the routine production, and the owner receives cash, keeps the client relationships, and focuses on advisory and complex work. It is a roll-up, but not a traditional full exit, and it is designed for exactly the firms the PE wave skips. If that matches where your firm stands, book a 30-minute call with our CEO.

Sources

• KPMG Corporate Finance — Professional Services Industry Update, Winter 2025 (top-30 PE count, $50B figure, firm-count and succession levers)
• Journal of Accountancy — Private Equity's Push Into Accounting (2021), PKF O'Connor Davies Deal (2024), The Accounting Graduate Pipeline (2025)
• CPA Practice Advisor — Citrin Cooperman Flips From New Mountain to Blackstone (2025), Crete Rebrands as Current (2026), Crowe/KKR (2026), Eide Bailly/Reverence (2026), Aprio/Charlesbank (2024)
• Inside Public Accounting — Baker Tilly Secures PE Investment (2024), CRI/Centerbridge (2024), PE's Mixed Reception (2025)
• CFO Brew — Accounting Enters Its Private-Equity Flip Era (2026)
• CPA Trendlines — What Multiples Mean to Accounting Firms (Koltin, 2025)
• The CPA Journal — The Benefits and Risks of Selling an Accounting Practice to Private Equity (2026)
• PCAOB — Audit Quality in a Changing World (Botic speech) (2025)
• Reuters — Thrive-Backed Crete to Spend $500 Million in AI Roll-Up (2025), Businesswire — Crete Rebrands as Current (2026)
• TechCrunch — Multiplier Nabs $27.5M for AI-Powered Accounting Roll-Ups (2025), DealStreetAsia — Multiplier Series B (2026)
• citybiz — Modus Raises $85 Million Led by Lightspeed (2026)
• PitchBook — General Catalyst's $6.3B Amex Deal Puts Its AI Roll-Up Strategy on Display (2026)
• FEI Daily — Private Equity Acquisitions of Accounting Firms (2024)
• The Rosenberg Survey — Recent Takeaways on Private Equity in Accounting (2025)
• CPA Practice Advisor — The State of Accounting Firm Succession (PCPS survey data)

This guide is for general educational purposes and does not constitute investment, legal, or tax advice. Deal figures and AI performance numbers are as reported by the companies and publications cited, at the dates shown. For advice on a specific transaction, consult a qualified M&A attorney and tax professional.