Brad Jacobs
Co-founder 2011Background
Brad Jacobs, a Brown University dropout who studied piano and mathematics, built a career as a serial industrial-consolidator before founding XPO. He founded United Waste in 1989 and grew it through roughly 250 acquisitions before selling it for more than $2 billion, then founded United Rentals in 1997 and built it into the world's largest equipment-rental company within about 13 months of aggressive roll-up acquisitions. He founded XPO in 2011 by investing in what was then a small freight brokerage, applying the same rapid-acquisition playbook -- buying Con-way ($3.0 billion) and Norbert Dentressangle ($3.53 billion) in 2015 to build scale -- before later spinning off GXO Logistics (2021) and RXO (2022) to leave a focused, less acquisitive LTL-centered company. Jacobs has said publicly that his willingness to sell each of his prior companies at what he judged to be the right moment, rather than holding indefinitely, distinguishes his approach from founders who become emotionally attached to a single business; after XPO he went on to found QXO, applying the same roll-up strategy to the building-products distribution industry. His approach of taking large personal financial risk -- investing his own capital alongside outside investors in each new venture -- has been cited by business historians as a key reason banks and institutional investors were willing to back Jacobs repeatedly across multiple distinct industries over four decades. His post-XPO venture QXO has already begun pursuing acquisitions in building-products distribution, suggesting Jacobs has no plans to slow his decades-long pattern of serial company-building despite being in his late sixties.