Software buyouts, once prized within the private equity world, are reportedly at a six-year low.<\/p>\n
The reason, according to a Monday (June 8) Financial Times (FT) report<\/a>, is that the specter of artificial intelligence (AI) disruption has brought dealmaking in the software sector to a halt.<\/p>\n The value of software deals dropped to $50 billion for the first five months of the year, from $88 billion during the same period in 2025, the report said, citing PitchBook data. This was the lowest total for the January through May period since the pandemic, the report added.<\/p>\n Industry executives tell the FT that the sharp decline is a sign of both certainty that AI will alter software firms\u2019 business models, as well the challenge facing buyout groups in separating winning companies from losing ones.<\/p>\n \u201cUntil an investor knows what a business may be worth post-AI adoption, it\u2019s impossible for them to make a case to their investment committee,\u201d said Paul-No\u00ebl Gu\u00e9ly<\/a> of Arma Partners<\/a>, a specialist tech banking firm.<\/p>\n In 2025, private equity firms made $290 billion worth of software buyout deals, an 11-year high, the report added. This year, however, is on track to be the weakest for dealmaking in the sector since 2018.<\/p>\n Advertisement: Scroll to Continue<\/p>\n The FT notes that fear that software companies were under threat from AI blossomed at the beginning of the year when Anthropic<\/a> unveiled a series of productivity tools<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition, analysts say the rise of AI agents<\/a>, which can perform routine tasks and supplant traditional software, could threaten business models built around the number of workers using particular software programs, the report added.<\/p>\n PYMNTS charted this changing landscape in a report last month, following a string of announcements from OpenAI<\/a>, Anthropic and Amazon<\/a> that \u201csignaled the growing emergence of a top-down software and corporate services deployment model.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one where technology is no longer sold to one enterprise at a time but rather distributed across entire networks of companies in a single stroke,\u201d the report added. \u201cIt represents a playbook that could reshape<\/a> how software is bought, implemented and competed over.\u201d<\/p>\n The initiatives in question included Amazon\u2019s launch of Amazon Supply Chain Services<\/a>, offering its\u00a0 freight, distribution, fulfillment and parcel shipping tools, previously available to Amazon merchants, to the wider business world.<\/p>\n The same day saw OpenAI announce it had raised $4 billion<\/a> for a venture known as The Deployment Company, aimed at getting businesses to adopt its AI tools.\u00a0<\/p>\n Within hours of OpenAI\u2019s announcement, Anthropic said it had launched its own effort to sell AI tools to enterprises<\/a>, in collaboration with Goldman Sachs<\/a>, investment group Blackstone<\/a> and private equity firm Hellman & Friedman<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Software buyouts, once prized within the private equity world, are reportedly at a six-year low. The reason, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[30275,345,343,344,128875,85,46,43,3238,262,7130,125,264],"class_list":["post-482355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-acquisitions","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-dealmaking","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-private-equity","tag-pymnts-news","tag-software","tag-technology","tag-whats-hot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}