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The ‘SaaS Apocalypse’ is Over, and AI Is Boosting the Super Software Expansion, Says Orlando Bravo at SuperReturn Berlin Conference
The so-called SaaS apocalypse is “Over. Finished. Seriously, no more,” said Orlando Bravo, founder and managing partner of software-focused private equity firm Thoma Bravo, speaking recently at the SuperReturn Berlin conference organized by Informa Connect.
“It was kind of a stupid term, anyway,” Bravo said, arguing that the software companies are actually the gateway to “AI adoption in the enterprise.”
In a 30-minute speech to a packed room full of conference attendees during the panel “Does experience matter in the age of AI?” held on June 10, Thoma Bravo’s founder overturned the narrative that AI is killing software. Instead, Bravo described a new phase of expansion where AI is creating “unbelievable opportunities for firms like ours and many others” to buy domain-leading software companies.
“Private equity can do so many things that the public markets cannot do,” Bravo added.
The confusion around AI, Bravo argued, comes from misunderstanding how enterprise software works. Is this good for software, is this bad for software?, he said, pointing to a market where tech investors lacking experience have amplified the idea that SaaS is obsolete amid AI fears.
But software, he stressed, is “a brutal business” that requires experience, constant innovation, customer retention and operational discipline. “Only when you innovate and you grind and you run it well, then it appears to be a really nice business.”
The real divide today is not between software winners and losers, Bravo said, but between public market pricing and fundamental company’s value. “I’ve never seen a bigger bifurcation between what somebody values a stock and how somebody values a company,” he said.
For Bravo, the future has the new label of “super software that we are about to go into.” The solutions of the future are agentic solutions that automate human judgment, he said, which is a much bigger market. The winners, he argued, will be software businesses that combine domain expertise, innovation, leadership and execution. Companies will produce “more software in the world, not less,” he said.
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