Orlando Bravo on AI’s ‘giant sucking sound’

The death of software has been greatly exaggerated, said the managing partner of PE firm Thoma Bravo, who has more riding on its comeback than perhaps anybody in the world. The death of software has been greatly exaggerated, said Orlando Bravo, who has more riding on its comeback than perhaps anybody in the world. The firm he runs, Thoma Bravo, oversees $170 billion in investments, nearly all of it invested in corporate software under threat from cheaper replacements spun up by AI coding bots. “Right now it’s a really, really hard time to buy and sell a company,” Bravo said on an episode of Semafor’s Compound Interest. “There have been four times the software industry has been doubted, and this is one of them. Every other time, it’s boomed after it’s been doubted. People got it wrong. It’ll be the same thing this time.” The 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 the 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