Intermedia CEO On 26North Deal: ‘Fresh Capital’ Without Channel Disruption

‘[26North believes] the transition is still very much in the early innings of moving from legacy platforms to modern cloud solutions, further enabled now with AI. They like our partner model where we sell almost exclusively through partners in a way that is different than what our competitors lead with,’ Intermedia CEO Michael Gold tells CRN on his company’s new PE ownership.

Cloud communications specialist Intermedia has been acquired by New York City-based private equity firm 26North in a deal expected to close in the second quarter of 2026. But as the company prepares to bring in its new owner, the message to partners is clear: Nothing about the company’s reseller-first model is changing except the pace of execution.

“This is a growth opportunity. We’re going into it with fresh capital and excitement around continuing to grow the business,” said Intermedia CEO Michael Gold.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Gold sat down with CRN to discuss what the private equity transition means for the business and its channel-first strategy, where he emphasized continuity rather than disruption. The plan is to accelerate growth with a round of fresh capital, particularly around AI-driven vertical solutions for SMBs, while preserving Intermedia’s reseller model in which partners brand, sell and communications solutions as their own, accounting for 94 percent of Intermedia’s sales.

Gold also highlighted the massive market opportunities for partners: Moving customers off legacy communications platforms and taking advantage of Intermedia’s Microsoft Teams integration to offer customers a better voice product that what the Microsoft suite has in place today.

Meanwhile Intermedia, which supports more than 7,500 partners that use its cloud-native platform to serve over 150,000 business customers, will pursue selective acquisitions and maintain the current leadership team as the company enters its next phase of expansion.

Here’s what Gold had to say.

Why is now the time for new PE ownership?

The big headline is we’ve been a private equity-backed company since 2011. In 2011, we bought the company from the founder with private equity firm Oak Hill Capital, grew the business, sold it to [private equity firm] Madison Dearborn, and then with Madison Dearborn, we continued down to grow the company, improve the business, and now it’s time for Madison Dearborn to move on and get the return on the investment. Now, 26North is coming in. The way I view it, in all cases, we’ve had really good firms that brought more than just capital. They brought a partnership, challenging us, helping us as we formed our plans and executed on those plans. And I see the same thing with 26North. They like the business. They like the space. They believe the transition is still very much in the early innings of moving from legacy platforms to modern cloud solutions, further enabled now with AI. They like our partner model where we sell almost exclusively through partners in a way that is different than what our competitors lead with. We are, I believe, the leading company selling under a reseller model and enabling communications products to be sold under a reseller model. We sell mostly through MSPs and MSP-like programs, as well as [through] telcos. In all cases, they’re taking their customers who are on legacy systems, PBXs, and in the case of MSPs, Broadsoft by Cisco or Metaswitch in the case of telcos, all of which are legacy systems, and leading them to our more modern platform, enabling those partners to keep their brand to not only do the sales and marketing, but also the give the advice to do the onboarding, do the ongoing support, the billing, creating packages [and] refining it for vertical markets in partnership with us. 26North likes our plan. They like the opportunity, and they’re aligned with us to take this to the next level [and] do more and do it faster.

How will Intermedia’s partner-first model be impacted under the new PE ownership?

First and foremost, under PE firms, typically — and this one certainly — they don’t come and buy a business and then change things. We go out and talk to people and we outline the plan. Here’s what we’re doing, here’s where we’re going, here’s what it looks like, financially, strategically, the roadmap, etc., and you align. [26North] like all of that, and so they’re betting on us being able to execute well on the plans that were presented, as well as to enhance those plans in some of the ways that I discussed. With regards to the partner, one of the top, if not the top differentiator of Intermedia from the companies we compete with, is that customer ownership reseller partner program where we built our product in a way, and we built our go to market in a way, to allow an MSP or a telco to sell their brand [and] manage the platform as if it’s their own. They buy it from us wholesale. We develop the product. We operate the product in the background, but they run it and offer it to the customer as if it’s their own. That will continue to get better. A lot of development will continue to go into that to maintain our leadership position in that approach. We’re not selling direct. That’s not where we focus. Nighty-four percent of our sales come through our partners. That’s where we’re focused. We’re not going to have channel conflict. We’re not going to deviate from this plan. We’re not going to compete with our partners. Our partners are first; our partners are our customers.

Does Intermedia have acquisition plans under its new ownership?

Along the way, we’ve done a number of acquisitions. In all cases, earlier in the [new PE ownership] cycle. And so, as I look at the opportunities in front of us, there’s opportunity to find companies that can enable us with new products that we can sell to our base through our channel partners, as well as strengthening our vertical market stories, our AI, and whether strengthening the team [or] strengthening the product. These are areas that we would look to grow. Another level would be, there are many competitors who have subscale businesses or inferior products, and I believe that there’s an opportunity to do somewhat of a consolidation, and it’s just another way of acquiring customers by buying some of these legacy solutions and moving them onto a more competitive platform. There are cost synergies when you do that. These are just some ideas, and there’s nothing concrete. We’re not announcing anything. It’s just the areas that I would look at and where, perhaps, it opens up the channel for companies to also come to us as they’re exploring possible [and] next steps for the businesses.

How big is the AI opportunity in communications for partners and what is Intermedia offering today that goes beyond the buzzword?

AI, while it’s in the headlines every day, everywhere, in every industry, there’s an argument that it’s very underpenetrated because the opportunity is so massive, and so I believe that with our focus on the SMB market and selling through partners, helping those partners of those SMBs leverage AI in vertical solutions in a way that can make them competitive with bigger partners. We are in a position through our channel and through our platform to do that well. It’s an area of focus that we already have. It’s just going to be a big growth opportunity for us going forward.

For years we’ve had AI within our meeting product, taking notes, transcribing the meeting, creating the task that’s coming out of meeting — this capability we’ve had since right at the beginning of COVID. And then more recently, some of the newer capabilities would be AI to assist a support agent. So, a call comes in, the AI getting access to the information to help the engagement with that customer, as well as post-closing. Then, [also] available are the AI receptionists and virtual agents that can provide answers to the lion’s share of the types of questions that a business would typically get using the content that the business already has. Even the smallest of SMB can have this advanced capability and one of our partners can certainly help that SMB set that up. An area where we’ll be expanding going forward will also include the vertical market. Over 80 percent of our revenue today comes from 10 verticals, and within those verticals, we form many partnerships with the leading products that those verticals use to run their business. An EMR for doctor’s offices, the car dealer platforms, the law office platform and the like. We integrate our platform and products into theirs, and then with AI, you look at the common workflows across those verticals, and you can start to add additional automation. These are some of the areas that I’m most excited about as we expand our business.

What’s your pitch to partners as we near the second half of 2026?

The pitch is there’s still tremendous opportunity to move your customers off legacy phone systems onto a more modern system that will enable mobility, security [and] enhance your ability to compete, as well as leveraging AI. Embrace it and move to those modern solutions. Number two, if you’re a partner who’s been operating as an agent for one of our competitors and you want to handle support on your own, and you want to bill on your own, and you want better margins, and you want to be more differentiated and not hand over your customer to the vendor, think about moving your customers to the intermediate customer ownership reseller model. Avaya, Mitel [and] NEC have all had their struggles with the phone system business, and these aren’t growing businesses for any of them, but they’re still large installed bases. And those bases will ultimately move to cloud offerings, they just haven’t done it yet. That’s one area where my message to partners is: Wake up these customers. Show them the light. If [partners] want more of the economics; they want significantly higher revenue, better margins, and to be able to provide more to those customers than just a sales motion, then Intermedia is the best game in town for them.

Another big part of the message is Teams integration. Microsoft 365 is ubiquitous. It’s the number one solution for productivity for businesses in the world. And with it, you get Teams, which is the number one meeting solution. But Microsoft’s communications product is not as good as ours and from a partner perspective, just reselling Microsoft 365; unless they’re adding additional value on top of it, it’s harder for that partner to differentiate and make money. We have a tight partnership with Microsoft. We love Microsoft. We view them as a partner. And where we’re having tremendous success with partners is with our integrated UCaaS and CCaaS solution and archiving solution into Teams and 365, and so the partner can provide that solution — that’s maybe our fastest growing product.