MSP Powerhouse Centre Technologies Closes New Funding, Targets More Acquisitions

Centre Technologies’ new investment from LightBay Capital is expected to accelerate growth for the Texas MSP, which has already made eight acquisitions since 2013 and has at least three more deals ready to close this year.

MSP Centre Technologies Wednesday said a new investor has taken a stake in the company as a way to help pave the way for accelerated growth.

No dollar value was provided for the investment by Los Angeles-based LightBay Capital in Houston-based Centre Technologies, ranked No. 278 on CRN’s 2026 Solution Provider 500.

Existing investor Houston-based Main Street Capital separately said in a press release that it has exited its debt investments and equity investment in Centre Technologies with the MSP’s recapitalization with a new financial sponsor.

Centre Technologies in the 20-plus years since it was founded has become the largest regional MSP in Texas, said CEO Chris Pace.

“We’ve got brick-and-mortar offices in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, which have organically grown,” Pace said. “And we also have grown through eight acquisitions we’ve made since 2013.”

LightBay Capital is a larger private equity group that is backing Centre Technologies from a platform standpoint, providing not just capital but the partnership that will take Centre Technologies to the next level, Pace said.

“Main Street Capital continues to be bullish about Centre,” he said. “They are continuing to roll forward as part of our partnership, but now we’ve brought on another partnership focused on accelerating our growth. Our thesis is that in the next five to seven years, there’s really only going to be five to seven relevant partners out there. It’s not because of a lack of good MSPs. It really goes back to the tech stack continuing to get more complicated and cybersecurity getting more advanced. You need scale. You need all the necessary skill sets to manage IT, but customers also want personalized services And we’re a group that is very focused on bringing both.”

Pace declined to discuss Centre Technologies’ valuation after the new investment.

With the new investment, Centre Technologies expects to continue to grow organically and to make more acquisitions, Pace said. The MSP has already acquired eight other MSPs, six of which were in Texas and two in Oklahoma.

The eight include:

IT First Equipment, a Dallas-based managed services, cybersecurity and cloud services provider, acquired in March 2026
Dallefeld Consulting, a Fort Worth, Texas-based Microsoft MSP partner, acquired in October 2025
Hummingbird.tech, a Tulsa, Okla.-based IT service provider, acquired in January 2025
Netlink Solutions, a Broken Arrow, Okla.-based IT services and solutions provider, acquired in October 2023
Texas Systems Group (TXSG), an Austin, Texas-based MSP, acquired in July 2022
Commercial IT Solutions (CIT), a San Antonio-based MSP, acquired in June 2022
Tradentrix, a Houston-based cloud and managed services provider, acquired in February 2016
Architel, a north Texas-based IT infrastructure outsourcing company, acquired in August 2013

All Centre of Technologies’ acquisitions to date have joined the company as a single organization and not as a collection of companies, Pace said.

“It’s about maintaining our ‘OneTeam’ philosophy of building the best IT department in the world,” he said. “To do that, you need a strong team, and for us that’s a combination of our clients, our employees and our partners. First and foremost, as we work together defining best practices, standards, the tech stack, we learn from each other on how to get better every day. IT moves at lightning pace, even more now than it ever has. We have always stayed true to our focus even though our industry is very fragmented.”

There’s a lot of rolling up happening in the MSP space, Pace said. And as Centre Technologies makes its acquisitions, it makes sure customers know it delivers on three key requirements, he said, including:

A client looking to outsource IT wants personalized service, a business that knows their business, and is a true partner in helping leverage technology to accomplish their goals.
Businesses need a partner that provides local IT, not in terms of having someone handy to come and change out a hard drive, but in terms of understanding how businesses experience technology to provide the best recommendations.
A promise to bring an enterprise experience that simplifies a tech stack that continues to grow in complexity, especially with AI and cybersecurity.

“Part of our thesis has always been over the next five years, it will be really hard to do all three of those things, but Centre has built a unique delivery model,” he said. “The culture within our business and everything that we’re focused on is all about those three things, and we’ve created the momentum to be the platform with the focus to do it.”

In making acquisitions, Centre Technologies looks at whether the company is providing personalized services that show it understands customers’ requirements and whether it is bringing new opportunities for employees, Pace said.

“Anytime I get engaged with a prospect, I want to hear two things from them,” he said. “’I care about my employees, and I care about my customers,’ and ‘I want to be part of a group that has that same care for customers and employees as I do.’”

Centre Technologies currently has at least three acquisitions that are ready to close in the second half of 2026, Pace said.

When asked why his company’s name uses the British spelling “Centre” rather than the more common “Center,” Pace said that was his wife’s doing.

Before the company was formally established, Pace did IT services on a freelance basis. When he signed a large contract, he needed a company name and asked his wife what a good name would be.

“I told her, just pick a street sign and put ‘technologies’ at the end,” he said. There's a place in Houston off of I-10 called City Centre. She liked that and put ‘technologies’ at the end.”