Q3 2026 Software Industry Trends

Q3 2026 KEY HIGHLIGHTS

The largest deal in Q3 2026 was NVIDIA’s announced acquisition of Hugging Face, for $12.9 billion. Hugging Face develops computation tools for building applications using machine learning.

There were 407 financially sponsored transactions in the 1st 3 Quarters of 2026 with an aggregate value of $46.64 billion, representing 24 percent of the total volume and 9 percent of the total value, respectively.

Q3 2026 KEY TRENDS

Total transaction volume in Q3 of 2026 increased 3 percent over Q2 of 2026, from 585 to 603.

Total transaction value in Q3 of 2026 fell 17 percent over Q2 of 2026, from $131.2 billion to $108.7 billion.

MULTIPLES & VALUE TRENDS

The median revenue multiple on a year-over-year basis decreased 6 percent from 3.2x to 3.0x.

The median EBITDA multiple on a year-over-year basis fell 26 percent, from 15.6x to 11.6x.

TOP TEN DEALS THROUGH Q3 2026

The top ten deals by value have seen five new additions since our half year report. These include the previously mentioned Hugging Face and NVIDIA transaction, and the announced acquisitions of World Labs by AMD for $8.2 billion, OpenRouter by Stripe for $7.5 billion, MarketAxess by Intercontinental Exchange for $5.7 billion, and Altruist Corp by The Vanguard Group for $4.6 billion. These five transactions, with an aggregate value of $38.9 billion, represented 7 percent of 1st 3 Quarters 2026 transaction value.