The Most Active Private Equity Firms Buying MSPs in 2026

A managed service provider, or MSP, is the company that runs IT, security and helpdesk for small and mid-sized businesses on a recurring contract, and in 2026 a specific set of private equity firms is buying them faster than anyone else in the market. The most active buyers by acquisition count are Alpine Investors through Evergreen Services Group, now past 100 acquisitions since 2017; Oval Partners through New Charter Technologies at around 32 platform companies; and the Court Square and Berkshire Partners backed Thrive at 26. Private equity sat behind 69 percent of disclosed MSP deals in 2025.

I spent over a decade in investment banking and private equity, roughly $7bn of transactions and a board seat through a $300M-plus PE exit, and I now run growth for MSPs and cyber firms, so I read this market from both the buyer's side of the table and the operator's. This is the sourced version of who actually buys MSPs: 17 PE-backed platforms compared by add-on count, hold model and most recent deal, plus the multiples they pay and what a sale means if you are weighing your own exit. Every number links to its source, because most ranking pages name a handful of firms and cite nothing.

How private equity actually buys MSPs

Two words decide your terms: platform and add-on. A platform deal is the sponsor's first major acquisition in a market, usually an established MSP with real scale and a management team, and it becomes the base. An add-on, or tuck-in, is every acquisition after that, folded into the platform to add scale, geography or a service line. The platform seller sets the culture and often keeps a leadership seat and a larger equity stake. Add-on sellers integrate into someone else's system and negotiate against it. Same market, very different deal.

Four hold models cover almost everything in the table below, and the model matters as much as the price. Permanent capital buys to hold indefinitely and rarely sells, keeping brand and leadership in place (Alpine's Evergreen is the clearest case). Equity partnership lets sellers roll a meaningful stake and keep autonomy (Oval's New Charter). Serial recap builds a platform and sells it to a larger sponsor every three to five years (Thrive has changed hands twice). And the institutional roll-up, the most common by far, is a majority buyout that consolidates targets under one brand and one back office, aimed at a sale or recap down the line. Know which one is buying you before you talk price.

The 2026 MSP buyer scorecard

Seventeen active platforms, ranked loosely by acquisition volume and grouped by hold model. Add-on counts and most recent deals are linked to source. Where a firm is a family office or a multi-platform holder, the hold-model column says so.

Permanent capital: buy and hold

These buyers acquire to keep, not to flip. The pitch to a seller is continuity: your brand, your team and your name survive the deal, and there is no fund clock forcing a sale in three years.

Alpine Investors / Evergreen Services Group

Alpine runs the most active MSP buyer in the market through Evergreen Services Group, past 100 acquisitions since 2017 and 47 deals in 2025 alone, 33 of them MSPs, with 30 to 40 more targeted for 2026. Evergreen operates through platforms like Lyra Technology Group, Pine Services Group and Cedar Solutions Group, and it holds what it buys: acquired companies keep their brand, leadership and autonomy. Alpine manages roughly $18.9B across nine flagship funds and targets MSPs with about $2M to $15M in revenue. This is a permanent home, not a flip.

Cloud Equity Group / BrightWorks IT

Cloud Equity Group, a lower-middle-market firm founded in 2013, built BrightWorks IT around 2022 from four founding companies and has added seven tuck-ins since, including IS Concepts and Key Technology Solutions. BrightWorks passed $10M in revenue and 80-plus staff. The model is decentralized: acquired firms stay co-branded and keep local leadership rather than collapsing into one national identity. For a seller who cares about their team and their name surviving the deal, this end of the market behaves closer to permanent capital than to a roll-up.

Equity partnership: sellers keep a stake

Here the seller cashes some chips now and rolls the rest into the combined company, so a second payout arrives when the platform itself sells. You trade full control for a bigger total number if the platform performs.

Oval Partners / New Charter Technologies

Oval Partners, a Palo Alto firm founded in 2015, backs New Charter Technologies, which has grown from four founding companies in 2020 to around 32 platform firms by early 2026. The structure is the differentiator: New Charter runs an equity-sharing MSP partnership where sellers keep ownership stakes in the combined company rather than cashing fully out. Recent add-ons include Verus, Orchestrate AI Labs, ProTech IT Solutions and CTSI, most closed through 2025. If you want liquidity now and a second bite when the platform sells on, this is the archetype.

Agellus Capital / CompassMSP and BlackPoint IT

Agellus Capital, a Missouri firm founded in 2024, moved fast. It bought BlackPoint IT Services in September 2024 and CompassMSP at the end of that year, then merged the two into one nationwide MSP and MSSP platform in February 2025. It is early, so the pattern is still forming, but the founding move combined two established operators into a single scaled platform rather than buying one base and tucking in around it. Owners joining now help set the culture of a new platform instead of integrating into a mature one.

Serial recap: build, sell, repeat

A recap platform is bought, scaled, then sold to a larger sponsor, again and again. Each new owner underwrites the next leg of growth. It is the fastest path to a big number, and the least stable in terms of who signs your checks.

Court Square Capital and Berkshire Partners / Thrive

Thrive is the clearest serial-recap story in the market. M/C Partners backed it first, Court Square Capital invested next, and in January 2025 Berkshire Partners joined as M/C fully exited. Court Square closed its fifth flagship fund at $3.8B in 2026. Thrive reached its 26th acquisition with VitalCore in September 2025, sits near $400M in revenue, and is targeting a $1B NextGen MSP within four to five years. Every recap resets the clock and brings a larger sponsor, which is how these platforms get built and sold on to the next tier of funded buyers.

Norwest Equity Partners / Coretelligent

Norwest Equity Partners bought Coretelligent from VSS in October 2021, with VSS keeping a minority stake, and has done seven-plus tuck-ins since 2019 including Chateaux. Norwest manages about $2.7B and has raised $6.7B across 11 funds. Buying a platform out of another sponsor's hands is the recap pattern in practice: the business changes owners while it keeps compounding, and each new backer funds the next stage toward a larger sale.

AEA Investors / Magna5

NewSpring Capital held Magna5 for roughly eight years and grew its revenue eightfold before selling a majority to AEA Investors on February 3, 2026. AEA, a New York firm with about $18B in invested and committed capital, is now backing a national managed-IT expansion. Same logic as Thrive and Coretelligent: a platform matured under one sponsor, then handed to a larger one. The tell for a seller is that the buyer bought it from another PE firm, so another sale is the plan.

Institutional roll-up: the default model

This is where most of the market sits. A sponsor takes majority control of a platform, then consolidates add-ons under one brand and one back office, building toward a sale or recap. Nine of the seventeen firms here run this play, in different fund sizes and regions.

OMERS Private Equity / Integris

Integris began as a four-company merger backed by Frontenac, which added four more before OMERS Private Equity took a majority in 2024. OMERS is the PE arm of an Ontario pension fund, so it brings institutional, patient capital rather than a three-year clock. Integris has done around ten acquisitions over three and a half years, with Aldridge Technology in June 2025 and an April 2026 intent to enter APAC through First Focus. Pension-backed ownership usually means slower, steadier integration and less pressure to cut cost the day after close.

PSP Capital / Ntiva

PSP Capital, the Pritzker family office chaired by Penny Pritzker, acquired Ntiva from Southfield Capital in January 2022. Ntiva now runs 800-plus professionals and 2,000-plus clients, with The Purple Guys folding in during April 2024. Family-office capital sits closer to permanent than a standard buyout fund: no fund life forcing a sale on a timetable, which tends to mean a longer hold and less pressure to strip cost immediately.

Trinity Hunt Partners / Dataprise

Trinity Hunt Partners, a Dallas firm, took a majority stake in Dataprise in January 2020 and has run nine acquisitions since, including 360IT Partners in October 2024, Hooks Systems in May 2025 and phx-IT in August 2025. One thing worth clearing up: Dataprise is a Trinity Hunt platform, not a Court Square one, despite frequent conflation with Thrive. The playbook is a steady East Coast and national tuck-in march under a single brand.

LightBay Capital / Centre Technologies

LightBay Capital made a strategic growth investment in Houston-based Centre Technologies in June 2026. Centre had already done eight acquisitions since 2013 on its own and plans three or more in 2026 with LightBay's capital behind it. This is a fresh platform: the sponsor bought an operator with a proven tuck-in habit and is funding the acceleration rather than assembling a base from scratch.

LNC Partners / Cantey Tech Consulting

LNC Partners, a Reston, Virginia firm with $500M-plus under management, backed Cantey Tech Consulting in July 2021 and has added tuck-ins including Network Computing Group and Palindrome Consulting in November 2022. Cantey anchors the Southeast. Smaller fund, regional focus, single brand: a lower-profile version of the institutional roll-up aimed at one part of the map rather than the whole country.

ClearLight Partners / ICS

ClearLight Partners, a Newport Beach firm with $900M across three funds and 20-plus platforms historically, invested in ICS in May 2020. ICS has tucked in Unified Networking Solutions in April 2022, Cards Technology and AKUITY, building out from its Endicott, New York base. Standard institutional roll-up: majority control, one brand, methodical regional add-ons.

Tower Arch Capital / Intelligent Technical Solutions

Tower Arch Capital, a Utah firm whose Fund III closed at $750M in 2023, made Intelligent Technical Solutions its first MSP platform in May 2022. ITS has done seven-plus add-ons since, including Digital Seattle, OneClick Solutions Group, Black Breach, Afineol, Granite Computer Solutions and BrightWire Networks. A single-brand roll-up compounding out of the Mountain West with a mix of IT and cyber tuck-ins.

Lightview Capital / Buchanan Technologies

Lightview Capital, a West Palm Beach firm founded in 2012 with 50-plus direct investments, backs Buchanan Technologies, held since October 2020, and CyberSheath Services International, a CMMC compliance specialist. Lightview did six deals in 2025, including two new platforms. The CyberSheath position is a tell: compliance-heavy security is one of the highest-value corners of this market, and the CMMC land grab is pulling in capital that used to chase generalist MSPs.

Abry Partners / Options, CloudWave, SDI, Breakthrough

Abry Partners, a Boston firm founded in 1989 with $82B of leveraged transactions behind it, runs the multi-platform version of the strategy. Rather than one roll-up brand, Abry holds several IT services companies at once: Options Technology in financial-services IT, CloudWave in healthcare, a minority position in SDI Presence, and Breakthrough Technology Group. For a seller, that means joining a specialist vertical platform rather than a generalist national brand.

M/C Partners (historical)

M/C Partners, a Boston communications and IT specialist, is the legacy name here. It was Thrive's original institutional backer and fully exited in January 2025. Separately, it bought West Monroe Partners' managed-services division in December 2019, a distinct asset that never merged into Thrive. It earns a place because its exits seed the next owners: the platform it built now compounds under Court Square and Berkshire.

Why the deal counts disagree: 466 versus 169

Two numbers get quoted for 2025 MSP deal volume, and they do not match. CT Acquisitions counts 466 total MSP transactions in 2025, up about 20 percent on 2024, with $4.3B in disclosed value. Omdia counts 169 disclosed MSP M&A transactions the same year, with PE present in 69 percent of them and 17 MSSP-specific. Every ranking page cites one or the other and none explain the gap.

The gap is scope, not error. CT's 466 is the wide net: every MSP-adjacent transaction it can track, disclosed terms or not. Omdia's 169 is the tighter count: disclosed MSP M&A transactions under a narrower definition of what counts as an MSP deal. Neither is wrong. They are measuring different things and both get quoted as if they were the total.

For an owner the read is simple. The real number of MSP deals in 2025 sits somewhere above 169 and near 466, PE was on the buy side of roughly seven in ten disclosed deals, and cybersecurity is pulling deal flow: Kaseya's 2025 benchmark of around 1,000 MSPs found 53 percent planning an M&A strategy and 67 percent naming cybersecurity their fastest-growing revenue line. The buyers are active and the sellers are lining up.

What they actually pay

Valuation runs on EBITDA size, because scale itself commands a premium. The bands below come from the CT Acquisitions 2026 multiples report, and they are steep at the top: crossing into platform territory can double your multiple. This is the same math behind MSP valuation multiples generally, and it is worth modeling against how to value an MSP before you take a call.

Who is buying moves the number too. Aventis Advisors puts PE buyers at an average 10.1x EV/EBITDA in Q2 2025 against 8.6x for corporate and strategic buyers, with the median PE-led US deal near 12.8x. PE pays up because it needs the platform to compound, and a well-run MSP is the base it compounds on.

Then the quality adjustments, which is where owners win or lose a turn. Recurring revenue above 75 percent from contracts of 24 months or longer pushes you to the upper end, and those long contracts add roughly a full turn on their own. Churn above 10 percent cuts one to three turns. An embedded SOC, MDR or EDR practice earns a structural premium. And no single client should be more than 20 percent of revenue. The compliance and cyber premium is real, and it is why CyberSheath-style assets get chased.

What it means if you own an MSP

First, the model matters as much as the price. A permanent-capital buyer keeps your brand and team but rarely pays the top multiple. An equity-partnership platform gives you a second bite if it performs. A serial-recap platform pays the biggest headline number and changes owners the most. Decide what you actually want, a clean exit or a second payday, before you shop the business.

Second, your multiple is mostly built before any buyer shows up. Contract length, churn, client concentration and recurring-revenue mix set the range, and how you price and structure contracts is the lever you control. Two years of tightening those metrics is worth more than any negotiation tactic on deal day. That is the core of getting exit-ready.

Third, the headline price is not the deal. Rollover equity, earnouts, seller notes and working-capital pegs decide what you actually keep and when. A high multiple with an aggressive earnout you never hit is worth less than a lower one paid in cash at close. Read the structure, not the number on the slide, and price the risk in each piece the way a buyer prices yours. The firms in this table are sophisticated repeat players, and you usually get one shot. Go in knowing which model is across the table and what your own numbers are worth.

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