Private equity and AI: take a company private, rebuild it around AI, list it again?

An emerging private equity thesis, and what the data says so far. PE firms could buy public companies that the market marks down for AI risk, rebuild them around AI out of sight of quarterly results, then list them again. The playbook exists (Dell, Dun & Bradstreet, SailPoint), the AI programs exist, the deals have not shown up yet.

The idea: a private equity firm buys a listed company whose share price has been marked down, partly because investors fear AI will erode its business; it takes the company private, rebuilds its products and operations around AI away from quarterly results, and a few years later lists it again at a higher value. It is a thesis, not yet a trend in the data. As of October 12, 2026, Recent Funding tracks 96 take-privates, and the number with an article in which the buyer states a plan to rebuild the company around AI is 1. None of the take-privates of 2025 and 2026 could have relisted yet. What does exist: the take-private-then-relist playbook, private equity firms with stated AI programs, a public market that has marked software down for AI risk, and at least one buyer that named AI as a reason to go private.

The playbook it borrows: private, rebuild, public again

Taking a company private to change it, then bringing it back to the stock market, is an old private equity move. Three cases, each with its filings:

• Dell. Michael Dell and Silver Lake completed their take-private of Dell on October 29, 2013, a deal valued at about $24.9B, and Dell's shares were delisted from Nasdaq. Five years later, on December 28, 2018, Dell Technologies Class C stock began regular trading on the NYSE after the Class V transaction.
• Dun & Bradstreet went around twice. An investor group led by CC Capital, Cannae, Black Knight and Thomas H. Lee Partners completed its take-private on February 8, 2019; the company priced its new IPO to trade on the NYSE from July 1, 2020; and in 2025 Clearlake agreed to take it private again, for $4.1B (announced 2025-03-24, on the private equity deals list).
• SailPoint. Thoma Bravo took the identity software company private in 2022 in a deal valued at $6.9B, and SailPoint listed again on Nasdaq on February 13, 2025, raising $1.38B, with Thoma Bravo still owning about 86% of it after the upsized offering.

These three and five more cases, each with both legs sourced, what changed while private and the multiple read every way, are on Full circle: take-privates that went public again.

The AI version of the thesis is the same cycle, with AI as the reason for the discount going in and the story of the rebuild coming out.

Why AI could turn it into a wave

Public markets have marked software down for AI risk. PitchBook's US PE Breakdown for Q2 2026 calls software "the sector at the center of the AI reassessment": US PE software deal value fell to $10.7B in the quarter, down 65.7% from a year earlier and 90.3% below its peak. In February, Bloomberg reported that more than 1,900 software companies were taken over by private equity buyers from 2015 to 2025, in deals worth more than $440B, and that Apollo's John Zito had asked a room of investors whether software is dead. A cheaper listed company is the first ingredient of a take-private.

Boards are already citing AI when they sell. When PROS Holdings agreed to be taken private by Thoma Bravo (one of the take-privates on Recent Funding's list), its merger proxy statement listed among the risks the board weighed "the perceived risks of artificial intelligence on businesses such as the Company's", next to a general decrease in valuations of software-as-a-service companies.

Buyers say private ownership is the place to invest in AI. When Thoma Bravo completed its purchase of Dayforce, the completion announcement said: "As a private company, Dayforce can prioritize long-term investments in AI capabilities, product development, and customer success without short-term public market pressures." That is the thesis in one sentence, said by the buyer of a $12.3B take-private.

The largest software buyers have built AI programs for their portfolios. Vista Equity Partners runs an "Agentic AI Factory" that, in Bain's description of Robert F. Smith's interview (March 2026), "deploys next-generation agentic tools across its portfolio of companies", about 90 of them. In April, Thoma Bravo signed a multiyear partnership with Google Cloud to speed AI adoption across portfolio companies worth more than $300B, with Google engineers embedded in them. In PitchBook's Q2 2026 survey of US private equity, AI disruption and opportunity collected more first-place rankings than any other factor shaping investment decisions.

Portfolio companies are buying AI. Some of the rebuilding already happens through add-ons: in the last 12 months, companies owned by private equity firms bought 17 companies that Recent Funding files under AI. The category comes from each company's own description, so it mixes AI software makers with AI consulting and services firms (and, below, an AI conference). The most recent:

* Estimate, not announced: Recent Funding's range from public facts about the company (headcount, revenue or the offer per share; hover for the basis, the link goes to the source of that fact). How we estimate.

Why it is not a wave yet

• Few stated AI plans in the take-privates on record. Recent Funding reads the articles about every take-private for a plan to rebuild the company around AI ("an AI-first company", "accelerate its AI strategy", "investments in AI capabilities"). As of October 12, 2026, 1 of 96 have one: Dayforce's, quoted above. An AI plan stated at closing is a reason given for going private, not yet a rebuild, and none of these companies has relisted.
• Take-privates slowed sharply in 2026. PitchBook counted 11 US private equity take-privates in the second quarter of 2026, worth $6.2B, a 90.1% fall from the first quarter, with sponsors cautious about large deals while public markets were at highs.
• The relist leg needs a buyer for software. In the same report, PE-backed IPOs reopened only narrowly in the second quarter (12 listings, skewed to industrial and aerospace companies), and software exits stalled. The AI fear that makes listed software cheap to buy also makes a software IPO hard to sell, until the rebuilt company can show the market numbers.
• It takes years. Dell spent five years private, SailPoint about three. A company taken private in 2025 or 2026 to be rebuilt around AI would, on that clock, come back no earlier than 2028.

What to watch

• A take-private announced with an AI plan. The first take-private whose buyer states an AI rebuild in the announcement will carry the AI flag on Recent Funding's take-private list. Today's list, with prices and SEC filings, is in take-private deals in 2026.
• Software take-privates by the firms with AI programs. Thoma Bravo, Francisco Partners, Vista and their peers, on the PE firm directory, where each firm's page lists its take-privates and what it is buying.
• AI add-ons at companies taken private. A portfolio company buying AI startups is the rebuild in progress; the table above updates with the private equity deals.
• Relistings. An IPO of a company taken private since 2025 that sells itself on an AI rebuild would be the thesis completed. None has happened yet.

How Recent Funding tracks it

Every take-private on Recent Funding carries ai_thesis: null, or the article's sentence in which the buyer states a plan to rebuild the company around AI, with the article's URL. It is updated daily, as the pipeline reads the articles about each take-private, and it is shown on the take-private list and in the API:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $RF_KEY" "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/acquisitions?deal_type=take_private&limit=1"

{
  "acquisitions": [
    {
      "acquirer": {
        "name": "Transom Capital Group",
        "pe_firm_slug": "transom-capital-group",
        "pe_sponsor": null
      },
      "acquired": {
        "name": "SoundThinking",
        "slug": null,
        "ticker": "SSTI",
        "exchange": null
      },
      "announced_on": "2026-09-29",
      "price_usd": null,
      "price_source_url": null,
      "price_estimate": {
        "low": "110000000",
        "high": "110000000",
        "basis": "$8 a share × 13,163,790 shares outstanding"
      },
      "source_url": "https://pulse2.com/soundthinking-to-be-acquired-by-transom-capital-for-up-to-159-million/",
      "source_publisher": "Pulse 2.0",
      "category": "security-privacy",
      "buyer_type": "pe",
      "deal_type": "take_private",
      "ai_thesis": null
    }
  ],
  "count": 1,
  "next_offset": 1
}

The firms behind the deals, with their take-privates and add-ons, are at GET /api/v1/pe-firms and on the PE firm directory. The API is free and read-only; a free API key takes just an email, and the API docs describe every field.

Sources

• Silver Lake, Dell completes go-private transaction (October 29, 2013)
• Dell Technologies, completes Class V transaction, Form 8-K exhibit 99.1 (December 28, 2018)
• Dun & Bradstreet, investor group completes acquisition, Form 8-K exhibit 99.1 (February 8, 2019)
• Latham & Watkins, advises underwriters in Dun & Bradstreet's IPO (July 2020)
• IPOScoop, SailPoint prices upsized IPO (February 13, 2025)
• PROS Holdings, definitive merger proxy statement (2025)
• Dayforce completion announcement, as published by TechIntelPro (2026)
• Bloomberg, Private equity's giant software bet has been upended by AI, via swissinfo.ch (February 3, 2026)
• Bain & Company, The advantage of scale with Robert F. Smith (March 17, 2026)
• Bloomberg News, Thoma Bravo signs multiyear deal with Google for AI adoption (April 15, 2026)
• PitchBook, US PE Breakdown Q2 2026 (July 6, 2026)

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