1、The New Era in Tech Investing Starts NowWith growth slowing and AI looming,private equitys hottest sector is going to require a new playbook.By David Lipman,Christopher Perry,and Grant Kieffer Copyright 2026 Bain&Company,Inc.All rights reserved.1The New Era in Tech Investing Starts NowAt a GlanceSof

2、tware dealmaking limped along in early 2026 as slowed revenue growth and the threat of AIdrove a wedge between buyers and sellers.But amid the tumult,patterns are emerging that suggest how general partners and theirportfolio companies can navigate through the uncertainty.Managing both the risk and o

3、pportunity posed by AI boils down to rethinking due diligence andvalue-creation playbooks,while retooling metrics to validate success.If software investing has delivered anything to private equity investors so far in 2026,it is the disquieting certainty that the world has changedprobably forever.Rev

4、enue growth that was running around 20%annually is now trending at half that.Net revenue retention(NRR)has dropped about 8 points since 2021(see Figure 1).Dealmaking is at a crawl.Aging portfolios are suddenly a thing in tech investing.And looming over everything else is the specter of artificial in

5、telligence,which,at best,threatens the once-unassailable SaaS value proposition and,at worst,raises fears that some software use cases are veering toward obsolescence.Perhaps most ominous is the building evidence that software is losing the structural advantages that for a decade produced the buyout

6、 industrys shiniest returns.The software assets that are transacting in the private markets continue to attract high prices,largely because sponsors have focused their efforts on selling their A-plus companies.Yet deals completed after the Covid-19 pandemic,including more seasoned investments from 2