Tech services: Deal insights series 2025

Deal Insights Series 2025

Year 2025 marks a reset for IT services as the industry shifts from macro‑driven caution to scaled AI adoption, larger dealmaking, accelerating consolidation and renewed M&A momentum.

• The deal environment in 2025 is characterized by a marked rise in large transactions, with 30-plus large deals driven by strategics and private equity firms backing scalable and repeatable AI models, contrasting sharply with focus on emerging tech and capability‑led dealmaking of 2021–22.

• Enterprises are moving from AI pilots to full‑scale production, prompting a shift from exploratory spending to outcome‑driven investments focused on resilience, scalability and measurable impact, reflecting a clear pivot toward building AI‑first services playbooks.

• Strategics and PE‑backed portfolios are consolidating capabilities and client accounts by acquiring specialist firms, while private equity remains selective, concentrating capital on large, conviction‑driven bets to hedge against AI‑led volume compression and expectations for productivity gains.

• Deal momentum remained resilient across cloud ecosystems, with multi‑cloud and ecosystem‑native players continuing to attract strong PE interest. The Salesforce ecosystem witnessed a sharp uptick in activity, with 55-plus transactions, reflecting Salesforce’s accelerated push to embed AI across core enterprise workflows. Year 2025 also marked the early emergence of AI‑native dealmaking, with platforms such as Lyzr.ai and Cognida.ai securing minority.

• The year further saw a string of marquee PE exits despite an otherwise muted macro backdrop. Notable transactions included Advent’s exit of Encora to Coforge, Gryphon Investors’ sale of 3Cloud to Cognizant, and Sverica’s exit of Coastal Cloud to TCS. These outcomes underscore PE firms’ disciplined value‑creation playbooks and continued buyer appetite for scaled, PE‑backed assets with deep cloud‑ecosystem and AI‑led capabilities.