Full Year 2025 Software Industry Trends

2025 KEY HIGHLIGHTS

The highest value deal in 2025 was PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners’ announced acquisition of Electronic Arts (EA), for $55 billion. EA develops and delivers games, content and online services, including Battlefield™, Apex Legends™, The Sims™, Need for Speed™, and various EA SPORTS™ titles.

Three of the top ten transactions in 2025 were in the security software space, including the $32 billion acquisition of Wiz by Google, the $23.6 billion acquisition of CyberArk by Palo Alto Networks, and the $7.8 billion acquisition of Armis by ServiceNow.

The most active acquirer in 2025 with at least 34 transactions through its affiliated businesses was Constellation Software, a Canadian company that acquires, manages and builds vertical market software.

There were 565 financially sponsored transactions with an aggregate value of $191 billion, representing 26 percent of the total volume and 45 percent of the total value, respectively.

2025 KEY TRENDS

Total transaction volume in 2025 rose by 8 percent over 2024, from 1,992 to 2,152.

Total transaction value in 2025 increased by 66 percent over 2024 from $253 billion to $420 billion.

The market segment with the highest total value in 2025 was Niche Software with $130 billion in transactions.

M&A MARKET OVERVIEW

Berkery Noyes tracked 6,177 Software transactions between 2023 and 2025, of which 1,117 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $662 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 5,060 undisclosed transactions to be $198 billion, totaling $860 billion worth of transactions tracked over the past three years.

Disclosed median enterprise value multiples for all segments combined in this report during the last 36 months were 3.2x revenue and 15x EBITDA.

Over the past three years, deals in the $10-$160 million range received a median enterprise value multiple of 2.6x revenue, compared to 5.4x revenue for those in the $160 million and above range.