Tech PE'nin bağış toplama çabaları turistleri geride bırakıyor

Tech PE's fundraising recovery is leaving tourists behind

Wed, September 23, 2026 at 12:38 PM GMT+3 3 min read

Featured image by Megan Woodard/PitchBook

Tech-focused PE fundraising has rebounded in Q3 so far, but with two managers accounting for most of the gain—a sign that sector expertise may matter more than ever.

Last week, software investor PSG Equity closed its third European fund at more than €4.4 billion (around $5.1 billion), hitting its hard cap and surpassing its €2.6 billion predecessor fund by almost 70%. The fund invests in European software and technology companies, especially those using AI to redefine enterprise software and the next generation of AI-native companies.

Earlier in the year, in July, specialist investor Franciso Partners raised $16.4 billion for its flagship fund, Francisco Partners VIII and $4.6 billion for its mid-market fund, Francisco Partners Agility IV. Both funds beat their targets within eight months of fundraising.

The recent rebound in PE tech fund closes came after a pronounced lull in the first half of the year, following the January launch of Anthropic's Claude Cowork, an AI agent capable of executing a range of tasks autonomously. Three weeks later, a set of plugins that extended the tool to handle tasks handled by mainstream business software helped wipe roughly $285 billion off public SaaS valuations in 48 hours.

The sector raised only $24.7 billion in the first half of the year, globally, representing a year-on-year drop of nearly 70%, according to PitchBook data. Q3 so far has seen fundraising value recover to $31.3 billion. However, fund count stayed broadly flat at 17 funds, with PSG and Francisco Partners funds accounting for over 80% of the total fundraise.

"GPs who are viewed as real experts are in a good position, which is very valuable to the LPs," said Gabrielle Joseph, head of client development at placement agent Rede Partners. "On the other hand, for tourists—like the people who have swung towards software because it was kind of easy but didn't develop genuine expertise—things are tougher."

Francisco's Agility Fund family received a 91 performance score in PitchBook's 2025 Annual Global Manager Performance Score League Tables, which provide a standardised view of private capital manager performance across 29 strategic and geographic categories, putting the firm in third place in the global buyout category.

According to Philippe Crochet, managing partner at technology and healthcare specialist Keensight Capital, it takes additional communication to help LPs feel comfortable with the sector.

"We had discussions with our LPs to share our vision, and to reassure them that, over the long term, we have very strong convictions that AI will accelerate our portfolio […] you cannot prevent certain LPs from shying away in the stage of uncertainty, but our LPs have totally understood the narrative," he said.

One reason LPs could be holding off on tech commitments is to figure out how to price the asset for the future. As the gap between AI winners and AI losers is expected to widen, it is important to identify which software will be fast enough to innovate and stay relevant. This will be particularly difficult for the 2018-2022 vintages, as entry valuations were very high in the booming market.

"My LP job is becoming more complicated every day," said Alexandre Armbruster, head of PE and infrastructure funds at Caisse des Dépôts. "We need to go into more detail to understand two things: AI resilience and AI opportunities potentially within the same company. We are looking at new criteria and KPIs to better understand risk, as things are moving so fast and continue to evolve. It's not easy for GPs, so it's even harder for LPs. It used to be a specialist game for so many years; it is now even more of an expert game."

This article originally appeared on PitchBook News