Brad Jacobs

Jacobs grew up in Rhode Island. He attended Bennington College in Vermont on a scholarship, studying classical piano and learning jazz in the classes of the musician Bill Dixon; he recalled that the school then had only about 600 students, with an average of nine students per class. Later, at his parents’ request, he transferred to Brown University, where his father had studied, and studied piano and mathematics, but he did not adapt to the large classes and left without a degree.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1][2][1][1]

In 1979, at age 23, Jacobs co-founded the oil brokerage firm Amerex Oil Associates. He said he first wanted to do oil trading after reading a magazine article about Ludwig Jesselson, chairman of Philipp Brothers, who later became his most important business mentor. By his own account, after only four years in business Amerex reached a gross brokerage volume of about $4.7 billion, becoming one of the world’s largest oil brokerage firms.⁠[1][3][1][3]

In 1983, Amerex was sold, and Jacobs moved to London, where he started Hamilton Resources, a physical oil trading company that did business in dozens of countries and reached annual revenues of about $1 billion; in 1989 he moved back to the United States.⁠[3][3][3]

A few months after returning to the United States in 1989, Jacobs founded the solid waste company United Waste Systems, serving as its chairman and chief executive officer for eight years. His plan was to buy landfills and local trucking companies in small markets, optimize truck routes, raise pricing and margins, and capitalize on scale; the company went on to become the fifth-largest solid waste business in the United States.⁠[3][4][4][3]

In 1992, United Waste went public with Paine Webber and Alex Brown as underwriters. Jacobs said that over the next five years the company’s earnings compounded at about 55% annually, with the stock price rising at about the same rate.⁠[3][3]

In August 1997, United Waste was sold to the company now known as Waste Management. Jacobs put the deal at about $2.5 billion (including $300 million of debt); another account records it as $1.9 billion.⁠[3][2]

One month after selling United Waste, Jacobs co-founded the equipment rental company United Rentals. The company was formed over Labor Day weekend and was trading on the New York Stock Exchange by December of that year; he said that within 13 months of its founding it overtook Hertz to become number one in the industry. United Rentals acquired some of its branches and cold-started about one-third from scratch.⁠[3][3][3][3]

Jacobs was chief executive officer of United Rentals from 1997 to 2003 and then chairman for four more years, stepping down in 2007. By his own account, at the peak of the cycle the company had annual revenues of about $3.9 billion, 750 locations, and 13,000 employees; as of 2011, the teams he had led had bought nearly 500 companies since 1990.⁠[3][3][3][3]

After leaving United Rentals, Jacobs studied many industries and ultimately chose transportation and logistics, which was larger and more fragmented. He first considered a roll-up of asset-heavy trucking companies, then turned to a non-asset-based freight brokerage model modeled on C.H. Robinson and Expeditors. On July 28, 2011, as managing director of Jacobs Private Equity (JPE), he presented to investors his plan to invest in Express-1 Expedited Solutions and become its chief executive officer, with the goal of building it into a multi-billion-dollar third-party logistics company.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3]

On September 2, 2011, pursuant to an investment agreement signed on June 13 of that year, JPE and other investors purchased convertible perpetual preferred stock and warrants of Express-1 for $75 million in cash, of which JPE contributed $67.5 million, resulting in a change of control of the company; the company was renamed XPO Logistics, and Jacobs became its chief executive officer and chairman that day.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5][5]

In 2015, XPO acquired the European transportation company Norbert Dentressangle and Con-way, one of the largest less-than-truckload freight carriers in North America. The Con-way acquisition was carried out through a cash tender offer of $47.60 per share, with the merger completed on October 30, 2015.⁠[6][7][7][7]

On August 2, 2021, XPO completed the spin-off of its contract logistics business, GXO Logistics, with XPO shareholders receiving one share of GXO for each share of XPO held; the two companies are each listed on the New York Stock Exchange. From that day until December 31, 2025, Jacobs also served as non-executive chairman of GXO.⁠[8][8][4]

On November 1, 2022, XPO completed the spin-off of its truckload brokerage business, RXO, leaving XPO as a North American provider of less-than-truckload transportation. That day, Jacobs changed from chairman and chief executive officer of XPO to executive chairman, and he served as non-executive chairman of RXO until May 21, 2025.⁠[9][9][4][4]

On January 15, 2024, Jacobs’s book How to Make a Few Billion Dollars was published by Greenleaf Book Group Press. He said the title is not meant literally; the book is about how to dream big and accomplish big things, which can be making money but can also be the arts or parenthood. The book launch was held at the Rainbow Room.⁠[10][11][11][1]

On June 6, 2024, Jacobs’s Jacobs Private Equity II and a small group of co-investors invested $1 billion in cash in the software company SilverSun Technologies, comprising $900 million from JPE and $100 million from co-investors including Sequoia Heritage. The company was then renamed QXO, with Jacobs as chairman and chief executive officer, aiming to enter the building products distribution industry of about $800 billion.⁠[12][12][12][4]

On January 15, 2025, QXO made public its proposal to the board of directors of the roofing distributor Beacon Roofing Supply: $124.25 per share in cash, a total of about $11 billion, a 37% premium to Beacon’s unaffected 90-day volume-weighted average price. Jacobs said that Beacon’s board had attempted to withhold the proposal from shareholders.⁠[13][13][13]

On March 20, 2025, QXO and Beacon entered into a definitive merger agreement, with the price raised to $124.35 per share in cash, valuing Beacon at about $11 billion including debt; Beacon’s board unanimously recommended that shareholders tender their shares. The tender offer expired on April 28, and QXO completed the acquisition on April 29, becoming the largest publicly traded distributor of roofing, waterproofing, and complementary building products in the United States.⁠[14][14][14][15][15]

On June 18, 2025, QXO proposed to acquire the building products distributor GMS for $95.20 per share in cash, a total of about $5 billion. On June 20, a QXO spokesman said that $5 billion was the company’s full offer and would not be raised.⁠[16][17][17]

On October 26, 2025, David Senra’s eponymous podcast released his conversation with Jacobs, titled “How Brad Jacobs Built 8 Billion-Dollar Companies.”⁠[18][19][19]

On December 15, 2025, XPO announced that Jacobs would step down from its board of directors and as executive chairman on December 31 of that month, becoming a special advisor until June 30, 2026, with unchanged compensation; XPO chief executive officer Mario Harik would also become chairman effective January 1, 2026. Jacobs stepped down as non-executive chairman of GXO on the same day.⁠[20][20][20][4]

On January 5, 2026, QXO announced that investors including funds managed by Apollo Global Management had agreed to invest $1.2 billion in a new series of convertible perpetual preferred stock, with a dividend rate of 4.75% per annum and an initial conversion price of $23.25 per share, to fund qualifying acquisitions completed by July 15, 2026.⁠[21][21][21]

On February 11, 2026, QXO announced that it would acquire the lumber and building products distributor Kodiak Building Partners from Court Square Capital Partners for about $2.25 billion ($2.0 billion in cash plus 13.2 million shares); Kodiak had revenues of about $2.4 billion in 2025. The transaction closed on April 1, when Jacobs said the company remained on track toward its goal of $50 billion in annual revenue.⁠[22][22][22][23][23]

On April 19, 2026, QXO announced that it would acquire TopBuild, the largest distributor and installer of insulation in North America, for about $17 billion, with TopBuild stockholders able to elect $505 in cash or 20.2 shares of QXO stock for each share, and total consideration about 45% cash and 55% stock. The transaction closed on July 1, and QXO said it thereby ranked first in insulation and waterproofing and second in roofing in North America. The same day, former TopBuild chairman Alec Covington joined QXO’s board, replacing Jared Kushner, who resigned to focus on government service.⁠[24][24][24][24][25][25][25]

On August 24, 2026, QXO appointed Ken West, former president and chief executive officer of Honeywell Process Technology, as president and chief operating officer, responsible for day-to-day operations from September 1 and reporting to chief executive officer Jacobs. As of August 2026, Jacobs remained chairman and chief executive officer of QXO.⁠[26][26][26]

QXO: Official website: https://www.qxo.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]