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As AI upends the software sector, PE investors are worried that the disruption could wreak further havoc as it spills into other core sectors—most notably, financial services.
While the so-called SaaS-pocalypse tore into the public valuations of software companies last month, California-based startup Altruist launched a new AI tool for tax planning.
The tech-focused wealth management platform—backed by investors including Baillie Gifford, Singapore’s GIC Private, and Orcant Ventures—is among several startups that have launched products sparking concerns that the human-driven aspects of financial services, along with the business models that underpin them, are in danger of being made obsolete.
The impact has already been seen in public markets, with the share prices of some wealth managers, brokerages and financial advisors falling as much as 20% over the past month.
I'm Emily Lai, and this is The Weekend Pitch. You can reach me at emily.lai@pitchbook.com or on X @ThisIsEmilyLai.
Until now, PE investment has been robust, with record investments in 2025. Globally, PE deal value in financial services set records in both 2024 and 2025. The sector received $261.3 billion of PE investment last year, jumping 88% from 2023, as predictable fee income and recurring revenues made these firms highly attractive for roll-ups and platform deals.
However, the expectation is that dealmaking in the sector may cool as the impact crosses into the private market portfolio.
“A lot of financial sponsors at the moment are in wait-and-see mode, because they are waiting for the market reaction to settle down,” said Ken Barry, head of Europe PE at global law firm White & Case. |
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| See which operational and technology decisions are shaping 2026 GP strategy |
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Discover what’s driving the future of private markets in the 2026 GP Outlook Report. New research highlights how private equity, private credit, and venture capital firms are navigating operational complexity, evolving LP expectations, and technological disruption. Based on insights from 100-plus firms, the report uncovers urgent priorities in private markets, covering fundraising, advanced technology investments, AI adoption, and more.
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Female-founded companies raised a collective $73.6 billion in the US in 2025, but 40% of that deal value came from just two big-name female-founded AI startups. One of these startups is Scale AI, whose co-founder Lucy Guo left the company in 2018. What is the other company that contributed so heavily to the increase in deal value for female founders in 2025?
A) OpenAI
B) Cohere
C) Anthropic
D) Together AI
Find your answer at the bottom of The Weekend Pitch! |
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A selection from our most-read articles of the past few days.
- The mechanism of accessing private markets for retail investors is crucial. The pitch for investment trusts was always democracy, but the least sophisticated participants were left in the dust. Read more
- Our Global League Tables for 2025 are here. See which investors led the way and explore other top-line stats from last year. See the rankings
- War erupted in the Middle East last weekend, creating uncertainty across oil and public equities, as well as further implications for private markets and financial centers in the UAE and Qatar. Read more
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“Autonomous systems investing is seeing real momentum because it maps cleanly to the Department of Defense’s push toward replaceable, mass-produced drones and ‘mass’ concepts more broadly. At the same time, the commercial pull is strengthening as edge compute improves and more industries—logistics, transportation, manufacturing and industrial operations—look to autonomy to drive productivity and resilience at scale.”
—Ali Javaheri, senior emerging technology analyst at PitchBook, discussing the boom in defense tech investing for startups developing autonomous systems. Read more about defense tech investing and how it could be impacted by the war in the Middle East here. |
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Keep an eye out for these insights and research reports coming out this week:
- 2026 Nordic Private Capital Breakdown
- Q4 2025 Infrastructure SaaS VC Trends
- H2 2025 MENA Private Capital Breakdown
- Analyst Note: Iran Conflict Highlights PE Opportunities in Defense
- Analyst Note: The Race to Build Enterprise AI
- H2 2025 Healthcare IT PE Report
- H2 2025 Mobility Tech VC Trends
- 2026 Southeast Asia Private Capital Breakdown
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| (Kimberly White/Getty Images) |
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Answer: C
Anthropic and Scale AI were the two startups that together notched 40% of all deal value going to female-founded companies in 2025. Anthropic's co-founder and president is Daniela Amodei. Read more about companies with female leaders and how AI continues to dominate the funding landscape here. |
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This edition of The Weekend Pitch was written by Emily Lai and Nadine Manske. It was edited by Andrew Woodman and Michael Bruning.
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