Who Owns the Largest ABA Providers

Ownership of an ABA provider is a checkable fact, and almost nowhere is it collected. This page collects it, with one rule: every ownership claim below is sourced to a dated announcement from the company or the acquirer, to an SEC filing, or to peer-reviewed or government research. No trade-press summaries, no databases that resell deal data, no inference.

That rule has a cost. Several large operators are not on this table because we could not open a dated announcement stating who owns them. Their absence is a statement about our sourcing, not about them.

The table

Organization	Most recent ownership event we could source	Date announced	Source
Hopebridge, LLC	Acquired by Arsenal Capital Partners	6 May 2019	Arsenal Capital Partners
Action Behavior Centers	Charlesbank Capital Partners investment, year of investment listed as 2022	Page undated; retrieved 6 August 2026	Charlesbank
Autism Learning Partners	FFL Partners completed investment	21 December 2017	FFL Partners
LEARN Behavioral	Gryphon Investors acquired a majority stake from LLR Partners	19 March 2019	Gryphon Investors
Centria Healthcare	Recapitalization with Thomas H. Lee Partners, completed 9 December 2019; previously a Martis Capital portfolio company since 2016	9 December 2019	Martis Capital
Acorn Health, LLC	Sold by MBF Healthcare Partners II to Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board	27 August 2021	MBF Healthcare Partners
Behavioral Innovations	Sold by Shore Capital Partners to Tenex Capital Management	6 June 2024	Shore Capital Partners
Proud Moments ABA	Sold by Audax Private Equity to Nautic Partners; completed 3 February 2025	10 February 2025	Audax Private Equity
BlueSprig	KKR-backed; KKR funded the 2020 combination with Florida Autism Center from its Health Care Strategic Growth Fund	5 March 2020	BlueSprig
Center for Autism and Related Disorders	Assets sold in Chapter 11 to Pantogran LLC, Proud Moments and New Story; court approval 26 July 2023	27 July 2023	CARD

Ownership changes, and a table like this is accurate only to the date of the newest document in it. Where we write that we found no later announcement, that means a search of the company’s and the investor’s own newsrooms on 6 August 2026 returned none. It does not establish that none exists.

What the announcements say

Hopebridge. Arsenal Capital Partners announced on 6 May 2019 “the acquisition of Hopebridge, LLC (‘Hopebridge’), a center-based provider of behavioral health services for children affected by autism spectrum disorder.” Arsenal’s release describes Hopebridge as headquartered in Indianapolis and operating in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, with expansion planned in 2019. Before that, Hopebridge, LLC filed six Form D exempt-offering notices with the SEC between March 2013 and November 2017; the last, filed 22 November 2017, reports a total offering amount of $22,500,000 and total amount sold of $22,500,000, with a first sale date of 14 November 2017. Hopebridge holds more registered locations in the federal NPI registry than any other single registered name — see the biggest ABA companies.

Action Behavior Centers. Charlesbank Capital Partners’ investment page lists ABC with a year of investment of 2022 and a status of Current. The page states: “Charlesbank invested in Action Behavior Centers in 2022 after a multi-year evaluation of many ABA providers.” It describes ABC as founded as a single center in Austin in 2016 and as currently employing “approximately 1,100 graduate-level clinicians” and operating “more than 200 centers across Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Illinois, North Carolina and Minnesota.” That description is Charlesbank’s, on an undated page, retrieved 6 August 2026.

Center for Autism and Related Disorders. Blackstone announced on 13 April 2018 that “private equity funds managed by Blackstone have agreed to acquire the Center for Autism and Related Disorders, LLC (‘CARD’)” from founder and CEO Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh, who the release states would retain a management role and invest alongside Blackstone. Five years later, CARD announced on 11 June 2023 that it had “filed voluntary petitions for a court-supervised restructuring under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas” and had entered an asset purchase agreement with Pantogran LLC, “led by Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh, founder and former CEO of CARD.” On 27 July 2023 CARD announced that the court had approved the transaction agreements at a hearing on 26 July 2023: Pantogran acquiring “112 centers across the United States” plus “all intellectual property and longitudinal data including CARD’s clinical database, Skills Global”; Proud Moments acquiring two centers in Nevada, one in New Jersey and three in New York; and New Story acquiring all Virginia locations, “including 3 special education schools and 9 ABA centers.”

Acorn Health. MBF Healthcare Partners II announced on 27 August 2021 that it “has sold Acorn Health, LLC (‘Acorn Health’) to Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board.” The release states Acorn was formed by MBF and CEO Vicki Kroviak in February 2018 and describes a network of 51 clinics across Michigan, Illinois, Virginia, Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. This is the one entry on the table where the buyer is a pension plan rather than a private equity fund.

Behavioral Innovations. Shore Capital Partners announced on 6 June 2024 “the sale of Behavioral Innovations (‘BI’) … to Tenex Capital Management,” describing BI as operating “77 centers across Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado” and stating that “Shore partnered with BI in 2017.”

Proud Moments ABA. Audax Private Equity announced on 10 February 2025 that it “has completed the sale of Proud Moments ABA” and that “Providence-based private equity firm Nautic Partners acquired Proud Moments,” with the transaction completed on 3 February 2025. Terms were not disclosed.

LEARN Behavioral. Gryphon Investors announced on 19 March 2019 that “it has acquired a majority stake in LEARN Behavioral (‘LEARN’ or ‘the Company’), from LLR Partners.” LEARN’s own post on the transaction describes it as an investment by “San Francisco-based private investment firm Gryphon Investors.”

BlueSprig and Trumpet. BlueSprig’s 5 March 2020 announcement of its combination with Florida Autism Center and Fusion Autism Center states that “KKR is providing new capital from its Health Care Strategic Growth Fund to fund the merger and support the continued growth of the combined company.” On 18 October 2023 BlueSprig announced that “Trumpet Behavioral Health, alongside affiliates Therapeutic Pathways and The Behavior Center, is now officially a part of the BlueSprig Family of Companies.”

What the research says about concentration

Two sources are worth reading directly rather than through summaries.

The first is peer-reviewed. Arnold and colleagues, “Private Equity in Autism Services,” published in JAMA Pediatrics in March 2026 (180(3):341–343, doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.5443, free full text at PMC12771383), searched PitchBook for private equity acquisitions from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2024 and verified the list against public data, press releases and company websites. Their findings, in their words:

• “Between 2015 and 2024, we identified PE-acquired 574 ASD service delivery sites, stemming from 147 acquisitions.”
• “The majority of PE acquisitions occurred between 2018 and 2022, comprising 79.6% (117 out of 147) of all acquisitions.”
• “PE-acquired ASD service delivery sites span 42 states, with the largest number in California (97), Texas (81), Colorado (38), Illinois (36), and Florida (36). 16 states had one or no PE-owned ASD service delivery sites.”
• Being in the top tercile of autism prevalence was associated with a 24% increase in the likelihood of private equity entry into a state.

The authors state their own limitations plainly: “we are unable to show PE’s percentage of all ASD service delivery sites, and we are likely undercounting PE acquisitions, the latter of which is generally true of studies that attempt to fully-track PE activity.”

The second is the CMS Applied Behavior Analysis Toolkit (August 2026), which has a section titled “Corporate Structures Involved in the Ownership of Applied Behavior Analysis Provider Agencies.” It reports the same JAMA Pediatrics figures and adds, citing a June 2023 Center for Economic and Policy Research analysis, that private equity firms “have been buying out smaller firms to build larger chains with 12 leading private equity-owned chains employing at least 30,000 workers across 1,300 locations.”

It also records the other half of the market: “Independent/founder-owned providers make up the majority of small and independent ABA agencies.” That matches what the federal registry shows. Of 20,221 registered organizations carrying the Behavior Analyst taxonomy code in the July 2026 NPPES file, 234 hold three or more registered addresses.

What CMS says, and what it declines to say

CMS reports that concerns exist and attributes them: “There are concerns among the ABA provider and caregiver communities that the growing prevalence of private equity firms acquiring ABA organizations could result in the prioritization of profit over the quality of individual care. This could result from possible lower levels of staffing and inadequate supervision.” That sentence is footnoted to the Center for Economic and Policy Research report. It is CMS reporting a concern held in the field, not a CMS finding.

CMS then states its own position, which is not to have one:

CMS has not taken a formal position on corporate ownership of ABA providers to date; however, regardless of ownership structure, ABA needs to be provided based on an ITP-driven individualized treatment model and not a one-size-fits-all model designed for revenue maximization.

The toolkit’s practical recommendations are about disclosure rather than structure. Its best-practice box asks provider organizations to “Maintain accurate ownership and control records,” “Report ownership changes promptly,” and “Align disclosure practices with federal and state requirements (e.g., 42 C.F.R. § 455).” It also notes that ownership changes can trigger risk-based revalidation or recredentialing by a state.

For a buyer, a clinician choosing an employer, or a family, that is the actionable part. Ownership is disclosed to the state under 42 CFR part 455 whether or not it is disclosed on a website, and a change of owner is a reason a state may re-screen a provider.

Our sourcing limits

Several organizations that appear on public lists of large ABA providers are missing here, because we could not open a dated announcement from the company or its owner stating current ownership. We used no deal databases, review sites or trade-press summaries for any ownership claim, and we make no assessment of any company’s business, finances or care.

If an entry is out of date, the fix is a dated announcement we can open. Send it and we will update the row.

Related: the biggest ABA companies by registered locations, the company directory, and what the CMS ABA toolkit says.