The ‘death of SaaS’ could be the best thing to ever happen to SaaS M&A

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) doomer headlines may have peaked in February—but if you check out the dealmaking data, SaaS has been looking alive. 

For the final quarter of 2025, enterprise SaaS M&A hit $83.7 billion in total value, recent PitchBook data found. This was across 245 deals, a slight drop in deal count quarter-over-quarter, but a nearly 24% leap in deal value. All in, this means that 2025 was the biggest year for enterprise SaaS M&A since the fever pitch of 2021. 

On its face, perhaps not what you were expecting. We’re a few weeks removed from February’s so-called SaaSpocalypse. In the 24 hours following the release of Anthropic’s Claude Cowork AI, software stocks in the public markets cratered: $285 billion in market value violently vanished overnight. (Since, some of the hardest-hit, including Salesforce, Adobe, and Workday, have evened out or rebounded—though all remain down year-to-date.) 

The SaaSpocalypse, ultimately, was a knee-jerk, existential reaction to where AI is (slowly, in many contexts) dragging the tech stack. And this round of PitchBook data is a reminder that the “death of SaaS” story, while a nightmare for public market multiples, is actually not a hindrance in the slightest to private market dealmaking.

“The SaaSpocalypse is accelerating M&A rather than slowing it down, and I expect enterprise SaaS M&A to remain highly active in 2026,” said Derek Hernandez, PitchBook senior research analyst, via email. “The sharp compression in public software........

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