Smith + Howard has completed an investor flip: Broad Sky Partners has sold its stake to TPG, the San Francisco alternative asset manager with roughly $306 billion under management. The transaction was announced in June 2026 and completed in early August. Terms were not disclosed.
The Atlanta-headquartered firm ranks No. 66 on Accounting Today's 2026 Top 100 Firms list, with $124 million in revenue, 62 partners, around 800 people and 11 offices.
What "investor flip" means, and why it is a distinct event
A flip is not a firm being bought by another firm. It is one financial owner selling to another, with the underlying business carrying on. The partners do not get a new set of colleagues; they get a new set of expectations, a new hold period, and usually a fresh mandate to grow.
These are becoming the second act of the private equity story in accounting. The first wave of sponsors that entered the profession is now reaching the end of typical hold periods, and what happens next — sell to a bigger sponsor, sell to a strategic buyer, or go public — is about to become a recurring headline.
Broad Sky held Smith + Howard for three and a half years. Over that period the firm grew revenue fourfold and completed nine acquisitions.
The interesting part is the CEO's own account of how
CEO Sean Taylor credited Broad Sky with helping "accelerate our transformation through meaningful investments in leadership, technology, AI-enabled capabilities and an offshore delivery center in India."
That is worth reading twice, because it is a Top 100 firm's chief executive naming, in order, the four things that took his firm from roughly $30 million to $124 million:
- Leadership
- Technology
- AI-enabled capabilities
- An offshore delivery center in India
Broad Sky CEO Tyler Zachem described the outcome as an example of the firm's "integrated investor-operator model," and said Smith + Howard is well positioned for its next phase with TPG. The incoming capital is earmarked for organic growth, geographic expansion, AI investment, expanded advisory services and further acquisitions.
Why this matters if you have no intention of taking outside capital
The obvious reading of a story like this is that private equity money is what makes fourfold growth possible. That is part of it — nine acquisitions in three and a half years is not self-funded.
But look again at the list. Three of the four things Taylor names are not capital-intensive in the way an acquisition programme is. Technology, AI-enabled preparation, and offshore delivery capacity are all things a firm can buy as an operating expense, at whatever scale it is at today, without selling a share of itself to anyone.
The offshore delivery center is the clearest example. Smith + Howard built its own in India — which makes sense at $124 million of revenue and 800 people. At $6 million and 30 people, building one is absurd, but using one is not. The capability is purchasable; only the ownership model differs.
That is the practical takeaway from this deal. The growth playbook that attracted a $306 billion asset manager is published, in the CEO's own words, and most of it is available to firms that will never take an outside investor.
What GTPH does with that
We are the version of that fourth item you do not have to build: AI-enabled preparation, delivered through Centers of Excellence in India, working inside your software and to your review standards, priced per return. No capital raise, no ownership change, no three-and-a-half-year hold period.
A firm does not need to be sold twice to get good at delivery. It needs the same capabilities the sold firms bought — and those have never been easier to simply hire.
