软件的死亡被大大夸大了，奥兰多·布拉沃这样说道，他对软件的复苏寄予的期望，或许超过世界上任何其他人。
The death of software has been greatly exaggerated, said Orlando Bravo, who has more riding on its comeback than perhaps anybody in the world.
他领导的公司Thoma Bravo管理着1700亿美元的投资，几乎全部投资于企业软件，而这些软件正面临着由AI编码机器人推出的更便宜替代品的威胁。
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.
“目前买卖公司是非常、非常困难的时期，”布拉沃在Semafor的一期节目中表示。“软件行业曾四次遭到质疑，而这是其中一次。每一次在被质疑之后，它都迎来了繁荣。人们之前都错了。这一次也会一样。”今年早些时候软件股票的急剧下跌使该行业的交易陷入停滞，因为首席执行官不愿在低点出售，私募股权公司也难以筹集债务。这种冻结开始解冻，施耐德以230亿美元收购PTC，以及上周一家Thoma支持的竞争对手以60亿美元收购AI网络安全公司Varonis等交易就是例证。
“Right now it’s a really, really hard time to buy and sell a company,” Bravo said on an episode of Semafor’s . “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 Thoma-backed competitor.
他说，唯一重要的问题是“你的领域专业知识水平如何，以及复制它有多难”。Thoma Bravo于2025年收购的人力资源软件提供商Dayforce，“不是在卖代码。
The only questions that matter, he said, are “what is your level of domain expertise and how difficult it is to replicate it.”Dayforce, an HR-software provider Thoma Bravo bought in 2025, “is not selling you code.
[它]在卖的是：‘我会按时支付您员工的工资，他们的扣除项会正确，工资单上的金额也会正确。如果不是，我承担责任。’”“有人可能会试图重现他们的代码，”布拉沃说。“很好。这项业务不在于此。”他还表示，Anthropic和OpenAI等“巨头公司”的即将进行的首次公开募股（IPO）将挤占其他公司的资本市场空间——这对私募股权行业来说是坏消息，该行业正坐拥估计3.8万亿美元的未售出公司积压。
[It] is selling the following: ‘I will pay your employees on time, their deductions will be right, and their amount on their paycheck will be right. And if they’re not, I take the liability for it.’”“Yeah, somebody could try to recreate their code,” Bravo said. “Great. The business is not about that.”He also said the coming IPOs of “monster companies” like Anthropic and OpenAI will crowd others out of the capital markets — bad news for the private equity industry, which is sitting on an estimated $3.8 trillion backlog of unsold companies.
“当他们不得不就这笔巨额资本做出重大决策时，谁还会关注这些东西呢？”他说。
“Who’s gonna pay attention with this stuff when they have to make big decisions on this enormous capital?” he said. — Liz Hoffman and Rohan Goswami