The focus on technology private equity investments has increased in recent years, with many firms specializing in this area – ranging from tech private equity firms, growth equity firms, and venture capital firms.
Thus, we have mapped the most active technology private equity investors in technology (by number of deals).
While technology companies can be broadly considered as those firms operating across software, SaaS, IT Services, and AI, we have taken a more detailed approach based on data available on Mergermarket.
For this analysis, technology companies are considered to be firms operating in the following segments: Application software products, Computer mainframes, Computer peripherals, Data processing, Hardware maintenance, IT consulting, IT training, Laptops, Minicomputers, Operating systems and systems-related software, Optical scanning equipment, PDA/hand-held devices, Software development, Systems integration, Voice synthesis/recognition equipment. Many technology private equity investors focus on mid sized businesses within these segments, recognizing their importance and growth potential in the investment landscape.
Types of Private Equity Firms
Private equity firms can be of several types depending on what they specialize in, different stages that they invest in, sectors they focus on, and their investment strategies.
Growth equity firms, such as TA Associates, focus on established companies that are seeking capital to accelerate their expansion without relinquishing control. These firms provide the resources and strategic guidance needed to scale operations and enter new markets.
Other techology private equity firms, such as Tiger Global or Thoma Bravo concentrate on investing in technology companies, using their specialized expertise to foster growth, drive digital transformation, and create value. This ecosystem of private equity and growth equity firms ensures that companies at every stage of development have access to the capital and support they need to thrive.
Top 10 Technology Private Equity Investors
1) Insight Partners
Overview: Insight Partners is a venture capital, private equity, and growth equity firm investing in expansion capital, growth equity and buyouts. It primarily targets the technology sector, including consumer-facing tech, e-commerce, internet, mobile, SaaS, infrastructure software, B2B commerce, post-secondary education, and data-enabled services. Insight Partners leverages its extensive network to support portfolio companies by connecting them with industry experts and resources.
Geographic Focus: Global
Investment Criteria:
- Equity Ticket: $3 million to $500 million per transaction
- Deal Sizes: Varies widely
- Stake: Majority and minority investments, primary and secondary shares, co-investments
- Board Representation: Seeks board seats in portfolio companies
- Focuses on accelerating growth in portfolio companies through operational improvements and strategic support.
Key Offices: New York, with additional offices in Europe, Asia, North America, and South America
2) Tiger Global
Tiger Global is an investment firm pursuing a long-term approach to investing in leading, global public and private companies that leverage technological innovation. It has been one of the most active investors in both venture and growth equity, particularly within technology-driven sectors. Tiger Global frequently collaborates with other investors to acquire and develop technology companies, including enterprise software and SaaS platforms.
- Equity Ticket: Ranges from $10 million to over $500 million, depending on stage and opportunity
- Deal Sizes: Varies widely
- Stake: Flexible approach, taking both minority growth positions and larger control stakes where strategic
Key Offices: Headquartered in New York, with additional offices in San Francisco, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Bangalore
3) TA Associates
TA Associates is a private equity firm based in Boston, Massachusetts, with a global investment focus. The firm also operates as a venture capital firm specializing in a wide range of investments, including equity, minority recapitalizations, and leveraged recapitalizations. The firm focuses on mid-market and mature companies across various sectors globally, with a significant emphasis on investing in tech companies.
Geographic Focus: Global, with a focus on North America (USA), Europe, Asia (India, Greater China, Korea), Scandinavia, and other emerging markets.
Investment Criteria:
- Equity Ticket: $5 million to $600 million in equity per transaction
- Enterprise Value: $50 million to $5 billion
- Stake: Majority or minority positions, without operating control. Seeks board seats or board-level advisor roles
- Board Representation: Seeks board seats or board-level advisor roles
Key Offices: Boston, Massachusetts (headquarters); Austin, Texas; Menlo Park, California; Mumbai, India; Central, Hong Kong; London, United Kingdom
4) Hg Capital
Overview: Hg Capital is a leading private equity investor in software businesses in both the US and Europe. They specialize in buyouts transactions of small and medium-sized enterprises, providing expansion capital for growth and focusing on operational improvements to enhance performance. Hg Capital targets mission-critical software businesses that are essential to their clients’ operations, ensuring deep integration into operational processes and supporting business continuity. They seek to invest in a wide range of software verticals including consumer, healthcare, TMT, and energy.
Geographic Focus: North America and Europe
Investment Criteria:
- Equity Ticket: $75 million to $1 billion
- Enterprise Value: $25 million to $1.8 billion
- Stake: Prefers majority or minority stakes
Key Offices: Headquartered in London, UK, with additional offices in Munich, Germany; Paris, France; San Francisco, California; and New York, New York
5) Thoma Bravo
Overview: Thoma Bravo is one of the largest software-focused private equity firms located in the USA with about $142 billion in assets under management. They specialize in recapitalizations, buyouts, and buy-and-build transactions for middle-market businesses and have invested in more than 480 companies. Thoma Bravo seeks to invest in proven companies with strong growth potential and is dedicated to building and supporting great companies with exceptional management teams.
Geographic Focus: North America focus but also considers global investments
Investment Criteria:
- Equity Ticket: $20 to $750 million
- Enterprise Value: $100 million to $2 billion
- Revenue: Min $50 million
Key Offices: Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with additional offices in San Francisco, California; Miami, Florida; New York, New York; and London, UK
6) Vista Equity Partners
Overview: Vista Equity Partners is a private equity firm that also invests in credit, and public equity. On their private equity side, they specialize in buyouts, acquisition financing, recapitalizations, restructurings, and divestitures of middle and large-market companies, with a focus on enterprise software. They invest in technologically enabled companies in industries such as financial services, healthcare, IT, media, real estate, and retail.
Geographic Focus: Vista invests primarily in North America and Europe.
Investment Criteria:
- Equity Ticket: $5 million to $1 billion
- Revenue: $10 million to $1.5 billion
- Enterprise Value: $25 million to $10 billion
- Stake: Typically acquires a majority stake
Key Offices: Headquartered in San Francisco, California with additional offices in Austin, Texas; Chicago, Illinois; New York, New York; and Hong Kong, Hong Kong;
7) Main Capital Partners
Main Capital Partners is a private equity and venture capital firm specializing in late-stage venture, restructuring, recapitalizations, and buyouts. They are a technology investor that primarily focuses on software verticals such as healthcare, enterprise, security, and financial services. Main Capital Partners focuses on under-resourced, lower middle-market businesses with a minimum of €3m in EBITDA and a capability for substantial growth, looking to combine local presence with ambitious management teams to drive market growth.
Geographic Focus: Nordic Region, DACH Region, North-West Europe
Investment Criteria:
- Equity Ticket: €5m million to €150 million
- Revenue: €3 million to €100 million
- Stake: Looks to take majority stake
- Exit Horizon: 3-6 years
Key Offices: Headquartered in The Hague, The Netherlands with additional offices in Dusseldorf, Germany; Stockholm, Sweden; Antwerp, Belgium; and Boston, USA
8) Coatue Management
Coatue is an American technology-focused investment management firm led by founder and portfolio manager Philippe Laffont. Coatue invests in both public and private markets, with a focus on technology, media, telecommunications, as well as the consumer and healthcare sectors.
Investment Criteria:
- Equity Ticket: $25 million and above
- Stake: Flexible on both majority and minority
Key Offices: New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Menlo Park, London
9) Accel-KKR Co LLC
For over two decades, Accel-KKR has invested solely in mid-market software and technology enabled services firms across buyout, growth capital, and credit funds.
Investment Criteria:
- Revenue: $10-200 million
- Geographical focus: Global
- Stake: Prefers to acquire a majority stake
Key Offices: Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, USA with additional offices in Atlanta, Georgia; Schaumburg, Illinois; London, United Kingdom; and Mexico City, Mexico.
10) KKR & Co
KKR & Co is an American global private equity and investment company. Widely recognized as one of the top firms in global private equity and technology investments, KKR & Co has evolved from being a U.S.-focused private equity firm to a global leader. Today, it manages multiple types of capital that it invests all over the world on behalf of its clients, and those investments are helping address some of the world’s most pressing challenges. KKR & Co supports high-growth technology companies with proven business models within the software, cybersecurity, FinTech, Internet, data and information sectors.
Investment Criteria:
- Enterprise value: $200 million to $1 billion
- Revenue: $10-200 million
- Geographical focus: Global, with a focus on North America, Europe and Israel for technology investments
- Stake: Prefers to acquire a majority stake
Key Offices: The firm maintains offices across the globe, including cities such as Beijing, Dubai, Dublin, Houston, Hong Kong, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Menlo Park, Mumbai, Paris, Riyadh, San Francisco, São Paulo, Seoul, Singapore, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo, and others
Tech Company Valuations
Valuing technology companies differs significantly from traditional industries, as much of their worth lies (along with cash flow) in intangible assets such as intellectual property, software, customer networks, and recurring revenue models. Private equity firms typically rely on a mix of financial, operational, and strategic factors to assess value.
The most common approaches seen on the market are:
- Income-based approach: Performing a discounted cash flow analysis based on financial projections.
- Market-based approach: Benchmarking to comparable public companies and precedent transactions
- Asset-based approach. Estimating the fair value of a company’s assets and liabilities
Private equity professionals often use modeling tests, such as LBO modeling, to assess the value and financial performance of technology companies during the investment process.
To know more, read our article on: How to Value a Technology Business.
Given that most technology companies have very few tangible assets reflected on their balance sheets, income-based and market-based approaches are considered to be more suitable for valuations. Valuations multiples are also commonly used, such as EBITDA multiples for IT Services or revenue multiples for SaaS companies.
Private Equity Investment Strategies
Private equity firms follow different strategies for their investments such as LBOs, growth equity, or partnership with venture capital.
PE firms typically use leveraged buyouts (LBOs) and growth equity investments (there are dedicated growth equity firms such as TA Associates) to acquire and grow tech companies – these strategies are effective in driving value creation.
Focused private equity firms, such as Vista Equity Partners, are taking a long-term approach to investing in tech companies – they prioritize operational efficiency and value creation.
Growth equity firms, such as TA Associates play a key role in the tech private equity space. These firms are investing in tech companies with strong growth potential, and are working closely with management teams to drive growth – their investment approaches are collaborative.
Tech private equity firms are also using venture capital investments to support early-stage tech companies – this approach allows them to identify and invest in promising companies. For example: Insight Ventures is both a venture capital and private equity investor. Another example would be the partnership between global venture capital firm Accel and PE firm KKR to form Accel-KKR.
Conclusion
The technology sector continues to attract significant attention from private equity firms, thanks to its rapid pace of innovation and potential for high returns. Leading private equity firms bring a unique combination of capital, deep industry knowledge, and operational expertise to their portfolio companies, helping them achieve operational efficiency and accelerate growth.
As technology companies strive to become market leaders, the partnership with experienced private equity investors can be a key driver of value creation and long-term success. Whether through growth equity, leveraged buyouts, or venture capital partnerships, private equity remains a powerful force in shaping the future of the technology industry.
About Aventis Advisors
Aventis Advisors is an M&A advisor for software companies. We believe the world would be better off with fewer (but better quality) M&A deals done at the right moment for the company and its owners. Our goal is to provide honest, insight-driven advice, clearly laying out all the options for our clients – including the one to keep the status quo.
Get in touch with us to discuss how much your business could be worth and how to maximize the valuation.
