Gryphon-Backed LEARN Acquires Little Leaves From FullBloom

A Sponsor-to-Sponsor Add-On

BALTIMORE — LEARN Behavioral acquired Little Leaves Behavioral Services from FullBloom on May 11, 2026, the platform’s third disclosed 2026 tuck-in following the Cornerstone Autism Center deal in February and the KGH Autism Services acquisition. Little Leaves finally puts Florida on LEARN’s map. Behavioral Health Business first reported the transaction on May 12. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The structure matters. LEARN has been controlled by Gryphon Investors since March 2019. FullBloom has been controlled by American Securities since December 2021. Both sides are sponsor-backed. This is not a secondary buyout, and it is not a flip from one fund to another. It is a strategic divestiture in which one PE-backed platform sold a non-core asset to another PE-backed platform that wanted the footprint.

Little Leaves runs 18 center-based ABA programs in Maryland, Virginia, and Florida, serving children ages 1 to 6, per the company’s own October 2025 announcement. Marina Major founded the company in 2010, with the first physical center opening in Silver Spring, Maryland, around 2016 to 2017, based on Little Leaves’ own location materials and an earlier interview with Major. FullBloom’s predecessor company, Catapult Learning, bought Little Leaves in November 2018 through its acquisition of Capital Education Group.

Maryland and Virginia were already LEARN territory through its Trellis Services brand. Florida is new. Whether Little Leaves keeps its name or gets folded into Trellis was not addressed in the deal announcement.

“The buyer pool is broader than traditional financial sponsors.” — Tommy Spiegel, Vice President, Provident Healthcare Partners (2026)

Tommy Spiegel, a vice president at the Boston-based healthcare M&A boutique Provident Healthcare Partners, told BHB that the deal fits a pattern. Spiegel was not involved in the transaction. He compared it to two recent PE-backed strategic acquisitions in autism services: ACES buying Ally Pediatric Therapy in January 2026, and Helping Hands Family buying Mission Autism Clinics in November 2024.

LEARN’s 2026 Buying Pace

LEARN has now disclosed three acquisitions in the first five months of 2026.

Cornerstone Autism Center (February 2026). LEARN rebranded Cornerstone’s three Indiana centers in Avon, Greenwood, and West Lafayette under BACA, the Behavior Analysis Center for Autism brand LEARN itself acquired in February 2021. Periculum Capital Partners advised Cornerstone. Co-founders Debbie Ide, David Ide, and BCBA Ken Weadick opened the first Cornerstone center in Greenwood in July 2010.

KGH Autism Services (early 2026). KGH’s Madison, Wisconsin operation was rebranded under WEAP, the Wisconsin Early Autism Project. The combined Madison center sits at 3113 W. Beltline Highway.

Little Leaves (May 11, 2026). The 18-center deal lands the company in Florida and builds density in Maryland and Virginia. It is also the largest of the three by disclosed center count.

LEARN has disclosed six acquisitions on its website since 2017. The platform runs more than 100 Learning Centers across 17 states, with a clinical roster of more than 500 behavior analysts and roughly 4,000 behavior technicians, according to LEARN’s own materials and trade press reporting on the deal.

Michael Maloney, who founded LEARN in 2007 and remains chief executive, has built the platform through a mix of de novos and brand-preserving acquisitions. The portfolio now includes nine named brands per LEARN’s careers page: Autism Spectrum Therapies, BACA, Behavioral Concepts, Priorities ABA, SPARKS ABA, Tandem Therapy Services, Total Spectrum, Trellis Services, and WEAP.

What FullBloom Keeps and What It Sold

FullBloom was at roughly $33 million in EBITDA when The Vistria Group bought the company in 2018 and at more than $80 million in EBITDA when Vistria sold it to American Securities in December 2021, per the firm’s portfolio retrospective. The 2.4-fold expansion came from five add-on acquisitions and organic growth during the hold period.

American Securities, which manages roughly $23 billion in committed capital, picked up FullBloom at the top of that growth curve. Little Leaves was the only ABA delivery business in the portfolio. Everything else FullBloom owns sits in K-12 education or school-based services.

Catapult Learning. The original parent brand, founded in 1976. FullBloom supports more than 150,000 children and 25,000 educators across more than 1,100 school districts annually, across 42 states, per the American Securities portfolio profile.

Specialized Education Services, Inc. (SESI). Operates private day schools for students with complex needs. In June 2024, SESI bought two Lexington Life Academy locations in Arizona.

CharacterStrong. Acquired in February 2025. Provides school-based social-emotional learning and mental health curricula.

BHB framed the Little Leaves sale as a signal that FullBloom is narrowing toward education and school-focused services. American Securities and FullBloom have not made a public statement to that effect. The math says the same thing.

The Little Leaves divestiture leaves American Securities with a FullBloom that no longer sells ABA at all, only K-12 instructional services and school-based mental health curricula. The strategic line is clean.

The 2026 Comparables

Two recent deals frame what LEARN paid for, even without a number on the page.

ACES and Ally Pediatric Therapy (January 2026). General Atlantic-backed ACES acquired Ally’s nine Arizona locations from SBJ Capital, taking the platform from 83 sites to roughly 92 and converting it to an ABA-only model.

Helping Hands Family and Mission Autism Clinics (November 2024). Zenyth Partners-backed Helping Hands Family acquired Mission from Seven Isles Capital, bringing the platform near 40 locations. Monroe Capital provided debt financing.

All three deals share a profile. A PE-backed autism services platform absorbs a smaller PE-adjacent or founder-led operator. None of the three was priced as a platform LBO. None of the three was a pure secondary buyout. The transactions read as strategic add-ons where the seller’s sponsor exits a single asset rather than the whole platform.

Industry tracker Mergium counted 15 autism and pediatric therapy transactions in Q1 2025, a high-water mark for a single quarter since Q2 2022 and a signal of renewed deal momentum after the 2022-2023 slowdown. The 2026 wave so far reads less like classic secondary deal flow and more like sponsor-backed consolidators pricing in local density.

Spiegel told BHB that strategic acquisitions used to focus on entering new markets while platforms pursued de novos in existing ones. Today, he said, deals increasingly happen in existing markets, reflecting an emphasis on local density, labor market control, and stronger payer relationships.

The PE-in-ABA Backdrop

A January 2026 study published in JAMA Pediatrics by researchers at Brown University’s School of Public Health identified 574 autism service delivery sites acquired by private equity firms across 42 states between 2015 and 2024. Nearly 80 percent of those acquisitions clustered in the 2018-to-2022 window. California led with 97 sites, followed by Texas at 81, Colorado at 38, and Illinois and Florida tied at 36.

Florida’s rank in that list matters here. LEARN’s entry into Florida lands in one of the five most PE-saturated state markets for autism services in the country.

Gryphon has now held LEARN for more than seven years, well past the conventional four- to five-year private equity hold period for the sector. Mergium’s year-end 2025 data show 13 pediatric therapy platforms held by private equity for more than seven years and another 22 for five to seven years, with the firm describing the industry as a “pressure cooker” primed for a wave of secondary buyouts and strategic consolidations. Gryphon has not publicly signaled exit timing as of publication. LEARN was Gryphon’s first behavioral health platform investment, made through Gryphon Partners V, the $2.1 billion fund that closed in April 2019.

Open Operational Questions

Three things were not addressed in the deal announcement.

First, branding. LEARN’s pattern with recent buys has been to absorb the seller under an existing regional brand: Cornerstone became BACA, KGH became WEAP. Whether Little Leaves keeps its name in Maryland and Virginia, or rebrands under Trellis Services, was not disclosed.

Second, advisors. No source has named a sell-side or buy-side advisor on the Little Leaves transaction. The Cornerstone deal earlier in 2026 used Periculum Capital Partners on the sell side.

Third, payer strategy in Florida. Florida transitioned behavior analysis services into Medicaid managed care in early 2025, a shift that has compressed margins for some operators. LEARN has not commented publicly on its Florida payer plan.

What Comes Next

FullBloom’s next move is the open question for the seller side. With Little Leaves out of the portfolio, American Securities now holds a pure-play K-12 education and school services platform. A follow-on acquisition in school-based mental health, building on CharacterStrong, would be consistent with that thesis.

AT A GLANCE

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