Software Deals Hit COVID-Era Lows Amid AI Disruption

Software buyouts, once prized within the private equity world, are reportedly at a six-year low.

The reason, according to a Monday (June 8) Financial Times (FT) report, is that the specter of artificial intelligence (AI) disruption has brought dealmaking in the software sector to a halt.

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.

Industry executives tell the FT that the sharp decline is a sign of both certainty that AI will alter software firms’ business models, as well the challenge facing buyout groups in separating winning companies from losing ones.

“Until an investor knows what a business may be worth post-AI adoption, it’s impossible for them to make a case to their investment committee,” said Paul-Noël Guély of Arma Partners, a specialist tech banking firm.

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.

The FT notes that fear that software companies were under threat from AI blossomed at the beginning of the year when Anthropic unveiled a series of productivity tools.

In addition, analysts say the rise of AI agents, 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.

PYMNTS charted this changing landscape in a report last month, following a string of announcements from OpenAI, Anthropic and Amazon that “signaled the growing emergence of a top-down software and corporate services deployment model.”

“It’s 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,” the report added. “It represents a playbook that could reshape how software is bought, implemented and competed over.”

The initiatives in question included Amazon’s launch of Amazon Supply Chain Services, offering its  freight, distribution, fulfillment and parcel shipping tools, previously available to Amazon merchants, to the wider business world.

The same day saw OpenAI announce it had raised $4 billion for a venture known as The Deployment Company, aimed at getting businesses to adopt its AI tools.

Within hours of OpenAI’s announcement, Anthropic said it had launched its own effort to sell AI tools to enterprises, in collaboration with Goldman Sachs, investment group Blackstone and private equity firm Hellman & Friedman.