Thoma Bravo's Orlando Bravo: AI won't kill software

Bravo's comments come after a sharp decline earlier this year in software stocks ground dealmaking in the sector to a halt, as CEOs were reluctant to sell at the bottom and private-equity firms struggled to raise debt. That freeze is starting to thaw, with deals like Schneider's $23 billion acquisition of PTC and the $6 billion takeover last week of AI cybersecurity company Varonis by a Thoma-backed competitor. Bravo's argument is that the market is mispricing the threat from AI coding bots. Using Dayforce, an HR-software provider Thoma Bravo bought in 2025, as an example, he said the company sells payroll reliability and liability, not code. "Yeah, somebody could try to recreate their code," Bravo said. "Great. The business is not about that." He also warned that the coming IPOs of "monster companies" like Anthropic and OpenAI will crowd others out of the capital markets, which would be bad news for the private equity industry and its estimated $3.8 trillion backlog of unsold companies. "Who's gonna pay attention with this stuff when they have to make big decisions on this enormous capital?" he said.