Sequoia Capital is set to invest in Sequence, a New York holding company that buys service businesses and rebuilds them around AI, The Information reported on Wednesday. In September Sequence and Michael Dell’s family office agreed to take insurance broker The Baldwin Group private in a deal Baldwin valued at about $7.7 billion.
The Information’s article is behind a paywall; we read its headline, not its figures, so the size and terms of Sequoia’s investment are not established here. Sequence and Thrive Holdings have now agreed take-privates worth about $23.0 billion in enterprisevalue within 45 days, by our arithmetic on the Baldwin and ADT releases.
Business Pill · Forward Deployed Engineers
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on forward deployed engineers. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Sequence, Sequoia or Baldwin.
The key insight: As we read it, Sequoia backing Sequence, as The Information reported, puts venture money behind a model that buys the service business instead of selling it software: Sequence and Thrive Holdings have agreed about $23.0 billion of take-privates in 45 days, by our arithmetic.
Sequence set out its model in a letter dated 14 September signed by co-founders Michael J. Lee and Alexander C. Rubin: “the holding company of the next century will be a technology company that owns and operates businesses”.
The letter says Sequence hired engineers from Palantir, Scale AI and Apple, and that its platform, Atlas, “is a horizontal model that can be applied to the majority of services businesses”. It puts US service-business revenue at “roughly $4 trillion” a year.
Its about page names its backers as Affinity Partners, Conviction, Dell Family Office, Lux Capital, 8VC “and others”. Sequoia was not among the names listed when we read the page on 11 November.
Two AI holding-company take-privates: Baldwin (Sequence and Dell Family Office), about $4.6 billion equity value and $7.7 billion enterprisevalue at an 88% premium; ADT (Thrive Holdings), $7.6 billion equity value and $15.3 billion enterprisevalue at a 45.6% premium. The about $23.0 billion total and 45-day gap are our arithmetic on the Baldwin release and ADT’s 8-K.
The Baldwin Terms
Per Baldwin’s release, shareholders get $32.50 a share in cash, an 88% premium to the unaffected close on 17 June 2026. The enterprisevalue of about $7.7 billion is about $4.6 billion of equity plus about $3.1 billion of net debt.
Baldwin says that is about 20 times its trailing-twelve-month Adjusted EBITDA of about $396 million. The release says eligible employees can keep a significant minority stake, and that the deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.
The BankSouth Numbers
The only operating results Sequence has published come from BankSouth, a Georgia community bank. The letter says loan origination went “from nine stages to three”, days from application to closing fell by about 52%, and loan volume “doubled year-over-year” with the same team.
These are Sequence’s own figures, and the letter says it is “still early”. It describes the work as done “working alongside the bank’s team”.
Two AI Holdcos, $23 Billion
Sequence is not alone. On 29 October, ADT said Thrive Holdings, “a permanent capital holding company”, would buy it at $15.3 billion in enterprisevalue and $7.6 billion in equity value, a 45.6% premium; we covered it in our Thrive Holdings piece.
ADT’s release says more than 75 businesses across accounting, IT services and the built environment are part of Thrive Holdings. ADT’s deal is about 2.0 times Baldwin’s in enterprisevalue, by our arithmetic, and the two sum to about $23.0 billion.
As we read the letter, the revenue Sequence is after is the client fees of the services firm itself, not a softwaresubscription: it puts US service-business revenue at roughly $4 trillion a year and says its engineers work alongside operators to rebuild workflows around Atlas.
Sequence Holdings, Sequence: Built to Refound, 14 Sep 2026
“Engineering gives us the ability to design that change. Ownership gives us the mandate and the long-term alignment to carry it through.”
Three Implications
FOR THE PRICE Baldwin is being bought at about 20 times its trailing-twelve-month Adjusted EBITDA of about $396 million, per its release, and at an 88% premium to its unaffected close.
FOR THE STRUCTURE Equity is about 60% of Baldwin’s enterprisevalue and about 50% of ADT’s, by our arithmetic on the two releases.
FOR THE PROOF The only operating figures Sequence has set out are BankSouth’s: loan origination from nine stages to three and about 52% fewer days from application to closing, per its letter.
The framework says the rise of forward-deployed engineering shows that “technical capability has far outpaced organizational readiness”.
As we read it, Sequence and Thrive Holdings answer that gap by buying the organisation outright: Sequence’s letter says its engineers work alongside operators to rebuild workflows around its Atlas platform. The framework predates these deals and does not discuss Sequence, Sequoia or Thrive Holdings. For the full argument, read Forward-Deployed Engineering on businessengineer.ai.
How each price splits: Baldwin’s about $7.7 billion enterprisevalue is about $4.6 billion of equity and about $3.1 billion of net debt, per its release; ADT’s $15.3 billion is $7.6 billion of equity value and a $7.7 billion remainder, per its 8-K. Shares and the ADT remainder are our arithmetic.
What Is Not Established
We could not read the amount, valuation or structure of Sequoia’s investment, or whether it is in Sequence itself or in the Baldwin deal. The documents we read give no revenue or profit figures for Sequence or Atlas, and we have not independently checked the BankSouth results.
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Sequoia is set to invest in Sequence, The Information reported, adding Sequoia to the backers of a holding company that agreed the $7.7 billion Baldwin take-private in September. With Thrive Holdings’ ADT deal, two AI holdcos have agreed about $23.0 billion of take-privates in 45 days, by our arithmetic.
A note on sourcing. The Sequoia investment rests on The Information’s report; its article is paywalled and we read only the headline and byline, so we give no figure for the investment. We read Sequence’s 14 September letter and its about page in full, The Baldwin Group’s 14 September release, and ADT’s 29 October release filed with its 8-K on SEC EDGAR. We did not contact Sequence or Sequoia. Totals, shares, ratios and the 45-day gap are our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
