The $300 Billion Bet That AI Could Unravel Inside Private Equity’s Software Reckoning

Private equity’s decade-long love affair with enterprise software is facing an existential reckoning. Firms like Thoma Bravo and Vista Equity Partners built $300bn empires acquiring niche software companies—from call centre tools to parking meter networks—financed by a new breed of private credit lenders. But surging interest rates and the rapid advance of AI (notably Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5) are now threatening to erode the value of these holdings, just as most of the industry’s largest deals remain unsold.

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