With more than 500 mergers & acquisitions transacted in his career, a serial entrepreneur has entered the building products distribution arena with his latest investment endeavor.

Brad Jacobs, who has been behind a handful of multibillion-dollar publicly traded companies, announced Dec. 11 that he intends to create a “market leader” in building products distribution in the form of QXO, Inc.

A news release details that QXO will become a standalone platform for Jacobs’ new venture following an investment agreement between Jacobs Private Equity (JPE) and minority investors, which will combine to invest $1 billion in cash into Silversun Technologies Inc. Upon closing of that investment, SilverSun will be renamed QXO, with JPE as its majority stockholder. Jacobs will become the company’s Chairman and Chief Executive officer.

QXO said it plans to create a tech-forward distribution leader through accretive M&A and organic growth, including greenfield openings.

QXO expects its revenue run-rate to eclipse $1 billion by the end of its first year, at least $5 billion within three years, and “tens of billions of dollars” over the next decade.  The company notes that the building products distribution industry represents about $800 billion in annual revenue between North America and Europe.

“QXO’s scale should elevate the customer experience, increase sales force effectiveness and enable margin expansion.”

For context, the No. 1 company on MDM’s 2023 Top Building Materials/Construction Distributors List — Builders FirstSource — had $22.7 billion in 2022 revenue, while No. 10 BlueLinx Holdings had $4.5 billion.

QXO said that its strategy anticipates that technology adoption — particularly AI and B2B eCommerce — will be key drivers for its goal of generating outsized stockholder value.

QXO sizes the “highly fragmented” building products distribution market as comprised of approximately 7,000 distributors in North America and 13,000 in Europe. It adds that the market had generated compound annual revenue growth of 7% over the past five years.

Jacobs’ Track Record

Jacobs is the Executive Chairman of less-than-truckload service giant XPO, and is the non-executive chairman of RXO and GXO Logistics — both which are spin-offs from XPO. He also formed equipment rental company United Rentals in 1997 and formed waste management company United Waste Systems in 1989.