Current

Current is betting that a small accounting firm in Charlotte or Somerset can carry Fortune 500 tooling if someone else builds the platform underneath it. Founded in 2023 as Crete Professionals Alliance and rebranded to Current in June 2026, it buys independent firms, lets them keep their name and their leadership, and plugs them into shared HR, finance, IT, recruiting, M&A support, and AI.

The founders are Jake Sloane and Frank Zhang out of the New York investment firm ZBS Partners, with Steve Stagner running it as CEO. In three years it has reached more than 2,000 people, roughly 30 firms, and over $500M in annual revenue, and Accounting Today has already named it one of the fastest-growing firms in the country. The pitch to a firm owner is simple: grow faster than you could alone, and don't sell your soul to do it.

Current is a growth platform for accounting and advisory firms, not a firm itself. It centralizes the expensive, boring parts of running a practice (corporate finance, HR, legal, IT, recruiting, and AI tooling) so member firms can spend their time on client work instead of overhead.

Member firms keep their brand, their partners, and their local relationships. What they gain is scale: global delivery teams in India and the Philippines, dedicated growth and M&A operators, and access to AI products a single mid-sized firm could never fund on its own. The legal fine print matters here too, since Current is not itself a licensed CPA firm; its network firms deliver the regulated work under an alternative practice structure.

The pain Current is built around is structural. A strong independent firm can be excellent at the work and still stall out, because it can't afford enterprise technology, can't hire fast enough, and has no clean path to grow or hand the business off when its partners retire.

Current's answer is to pool those problems across the whole network. Technology, hiring capacity, succession planning, and acquisition muscle all become shared infrastructure, which is how a Main Street firm ends up with advisory capabilities and AI that used to belong only to the incumbents.

The buyer is the partner or owner of an established independent accounting and advisory firm, usually one weighing the traditional options: sell to private equity, merge up, or grind on alone. Current pitches a fourth door where owners keep local control and a minority equity stake while tapping national resources.

Downstream, the real users are the firms' own clients: private-equity-backed companies, family businesses, and high-growth entrepreneurs who get advisory work their local firm couldn't have staffed before.

The core product is the platform itself: shared corporate services, global delivery, growth operations, and M&A integration wrapped around firms that keep their own brand. It is less a piece of software than an operating system for running and scaling a practice.

The sharper, more concrete piece is Tax AI, built through Current's tie to Thrive Holdings and OpenAI. In its first tax season it processed 7,000 returns, cut preparation time by about a third, and hit up to 98% accuracy, which is the kind of number that turns an AI story into a real one.

Current makes money the way a roll-up does: it acquires accounting firms, keeps them running under their own names, and grows the combined revenue of the network. What makes it more than a classic private-equity play is the shared platform and AI layer it lays over every firm it buys.

Owners typically keep a minority equity stake and their leadership seats, so the model leans on partnership rather than a clean buyout. Pricing is not published; this is enterprise dealmaking, negotiated firm by firm, not a per-seat SaaS tag.

Current is squeezed between two rivals. Above it sit the large incumbent firms it wants independent shops to compete with; beside it sit the growing wave of private-equity accounting roll-ups chasing the same firms to acquire.

Its claimed edge is the hybrid: the autonomy and local brand of an independent firm, married to enterprise scale and an AI stack built with OpenAI rather than bolted on later. Whether that combination holds as the roll-up field gets crowded is the open question.

The traction is real and fast for a three-year-old company: more than $500M in annual revenue, over 2,000 employees, and roughly 30 firms across 30-plus states and four countries. Accounting Today has named it a fastest-growing firm and a top-10 firm for technology.

The most specific proof point is Tax AI. In one season it ran 7,000 returns, saved firms about 31% of preparation time on average, and reached up to 98% accuracy, which is the difference between an AI pitch and an AI product.

On its own site, staff and partner firms describe a collaborative, people-first culture and credit the platform with helping them grow faster than they could alone. Those are the company's own picks, so read them as selected rather than neutral.

The wider conversation frames Current through the lens of the accounting roll-up trend: an aggressive, venture-backed consolidator promising AI and scale. The recurring caution about any model like this is the tension between local autonomy and a national owner's growth targets. Candid third-party employee reviews were thin at the time of writing, so treat the sentiment as early.

Current has raised about $162M, with rounds co-led by Thrive Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners and participation from ZBS Partners, the founders' own investment firm. Job postings also name Springdale Industries among its backers.

The more telling number is the war chest: the company has said it plans to spend more than $500M over two years acquiring accounting firms and re-tooling them with OpenAI-powered AI. Through Thrive Holdings, Current has OpenAI engineers embedded to build products directly with its accountants, which is an unusually deep tech partnership for the profession.

Current frames itself around reliability, respect, and resourcefulness, with a heavy emphasis on ownership and a belief that the future of accounting won't build itself. The mission it repeats is short: accelerate potential.

The workforce spans more than 2,000 people across four countries, including delivery teams in India and the Philippines, and work is hybrid and flexible by design. One real perk of the network model is career mobility, since employees can move to roles across dozens of firms rather than being stuck in a single office.

Compensation here is a straightforward base-salary-plus-benefits package rather than a startup equity story, which fits an accounting network built from acquired firms. Disclosed US ranges span widely, from hourly support and entry roles up through senior finance and advisory leadership.

The bands below are pulled from disclosed ranges on Current's open US roles and skew toward accounting, tax, and back-office functions. Pay is set by experience, geography, and internal equity, and offers are benchmarked against industry compensation surveys.

The legal structure is the interesting part. Current is the trade name for Crete Professionals Alliance, LLC, which is explicitly not a licensed CPA firm; the regulated tax and attest work is done by its network firms under an alternative practice structure that follows the AICPA code.

Multiple Current entities can be responsible for personal data, and the privacy notice covers the usual collection across its websites, contact forms, and recruiting. Current offers a Do Not Sell or Share option for personal information. It did not publish a working subprocessors list at the time of the crawl.

The headline event is the June 2026 rebrand from Crete Professionals Alliance to Current, positioned around the idea that AI finally lets local firms compete with the giants. Underneath it runs a constant stream of partner-firm announcements as the network keeps acquiring.

The other recurring storyline is the money and the AI: the $500M acquisition plan and the OpenAI partnership that produced Tax AI. Together they explain why an accounting company keeps showing up in tech coverage.