2025年第四季度企业SaaS并购回顾

EMERGING TECH RESEARCHQ4 2025 Enterprise SaaS Institutional Research Group Derek HernandezSenior Research Analyst,Enterprise SaaS andInfrastructure SaaSderek.hernandez@pitchbook.com M&A Review pbinstitutionalresearch@pitchbook.com PitchBook is a Morningstar company providing the most comprehensive, mostaccurate, and hard-to-find data for professionals doing business in the private markets. Published on March 24, 2026 Contents Key takeaways •Q4 recorded $83.7 billion in total deal value across an estimated 245 transactions,marking a massive 23.9% increase in deal value QoQ despite a slight 3.2% dip indeal count. •Activity was heavily concentrated at the top, as 17 multibillion-dollar megadeals—including five above $5 billion—accounted for 76.6% of the quarter’s totaldeal value. •Q4 represented the third-highest quarterly total on record, trailing only two quartersin 2021, as corporate acquirers surged back, with deal value skyrocketing 168.5%QoQ to $51.8 billion across an estimated 155 deals, up 9.2% QoQ. •The PE-to-corporate deal value ratio reverted to its historical 1:2, normalizing afterQ3’s anomalous 2:1 split. PE buyouts remained strong despite moderating fromQ3’s record highs, with $32 billion invested across an estimated 90 deals. •The strong Q4 finish propelled 2025 to $270.6 billion in total M&A value, easily thelargest year since 2021. Publicly held and PE-backed firms were the largest bucketsat $97.7 billion and $89 billion, respectively. PE-backed M&A surged 102.2% YoY,and VC-backed M&A rose 64.4% YoY. VC-backed companies continued to representthe lion’s share of deal count at 483 of 816 total transactions. •ERP dominated 2025 segment activity, accounting for $136.6 billion (50.5%) in dealvalue across 311 deals (38.1% of count), while CRM followed at $51.3 billion (18.9%)across 197 deals. However, AP saw the most dramatic growth at 222.6% YoY indeal value, followed by SCM at 115.7% YoY, signaling broadening buyer appetitebeyond the two largest segments. •Financial management systems led Q4 subsegment activity at $19 billion across 17deals, followed by manufacturing & operations at $17 billion across 30 deals. All acquisitions Our enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) sector includes more than 16,000 globalenterprise SaaS companies from PitchBook’s dataset of nearly 5 million privatecompany profiles. Our analysis covers dealmaking over the past seven years andincludes a taxonomy of six segments: analytic platforms (AP), customer relationshipmanagement (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management(SCM), knowledge management systems, and other application software. Global M&Atransactions in enterprise SaaS include PE and corporate acquisitions of enterpriseSaaS companies across a range of backing statuses, including VC-backed, publiclyheld, privately held (no backing), privately held (backing), and PE-backed. In Q4 2025, global enterprise SaaS M&A once again recorded a record number ofmultibillion-dollar acquisitions and buyouts, totaling 17 and including five above $5billion. This matches the total of 17 megadeals in the prior quarter. Total deal valuereached $83.7 billion in the quarter, representing the third-highest quarterly total wehave recorded yet, just shy of two heady quarters in 2021, which reached $111.3 billionand $113.4 billion. This was a massive 23.9% growth QoQ in deal value, as estimatedtotal deal counts were almost flat at 245, down just 3.2% QoQ. The largest deal of the quarter was the announced M&A of Confluent, a developerof an enterprise-ready event streaming platform, by IBM for $11 billion in December2025. The next largest deal was for Clearwater Analytics Holdings, a cloud-nativeplatform for institutional investors, which was announced to be acquired by a Permiraand Warburg Pincus-led Investor Group in an $8.4 billion transaction in December2025. Rounding out the top three deals is the acquisition of OneOncology, a hospitaland clinical network leveraging data insights and technological advancements, byCencora for $7.4 billion in October 2025. Along with the other 14 deals exceeding $1billion, the top 17 deals accounted for 76.6% of the total deal value for the quarter.We expect major deals to continue to move forward now that certain regulatorypressures have subsided. Notably, in Q4 2025, the ratio of PE-to-corporate deal value reverted to its historical 1:2,back from an outstanding 2:1 in Q3 2025. Q3 was the only time we observed that ratioof PE-to-corporate deal value. Despite this reversion, PE remained strong, decliningjust 33.8% QoQ in deal value and 28.9% QoQ in deal count from an incredibly strongQ3. Q4 easily stood as the second-strongest quarter in the year for PE. Altogether,PE buyouts totaled $32 billion across an estimated 90 deals. Corporate M&A surgedback in Q4 with deal value increasing 168.5% QoQ to $51.8 billion on an estimateddeal count of 155, up 9.2% QoQ. As we noted above, the concentration of value in the17 m