Thoma Bravo secures north of $20bn for 15th flagship software fund

Thoma Bravo, which in 2021 returned to fundraising only a year after wrapping up a prior flagship offering, appears to be moving just as swiftly to closing its latest.

The private equity firm, one of the first to specialize in software buyouts, raised more than $20 billion for Thoma Bravo XV, according to Form D documents filed this week. That puts the fund on the cusp of reaching its $22 billion target, reported last year by Buyouts.

Thoma Bravo Discover Fund IV, a mid-market software vehicle, also collected nearly $4.5 billion, just shy of its $5 billion target. In addition, Thoma Bravo Explore Fund II, a lower mid-market vehicle, brought in almost $1.5 billion, which is within a target range of $1.5 billion to $1.75 billion.

Taken together, Thoma Bravo has so far accounted for $26-billion-plus against a combined target for the three funds of more than $28 billion.

It is not known if hard-caps have been set for the offerings. Thoma Bravo is expected to continue fundraising, sources told Buyouts. The firm declined to provide a comment.

Thoma Bravo XV is one of several mega-funds in the market right now. It and others – including Advent International GPE X, Apollo Investment Fund X, Blackstone Capital Partners IX, Carlyle Partners VIII and TPG Partners IX – are competing in a crowded marketplace at a time when many LPs are either cash-strapped or overallocated.

With its gigantic initial fundraising, Thoma Bravo may have escaped the challenges expected for other GPs on the fundraising trail this year. KKR last month did the same by closing KKR North America Fund XIII at $19 billion.

Thoma Bravo, led by co-founder and managing partner Orlando Bravo, emerged in 2008 as a rebrand of Thoma Cressey to move from a generalist strategy to the full-time pursuit of software buyouts. The launch was timed with robust growth of the tech space, including in sectors of interest to the firm, such as application, infrastructure and security software.

Since then, digitalization across the economy has accelerated, powering the expansion of Thoma Bravo and peers like Vista Equity Partners and Silver Lake. Thanks to continuous – and ever larger – fundraising, these tech upstarts now rub shoulders on the Buyouts 100 with established PE brands founded in the 1970s and 1980s.

Thoma Bravo’s rapid fundraising owes in large part to non-stop dealmaking. It reports acquiring or investing in more than 375 software and tech companies in the past two decades, representing over $190 billion of value.

The deal pace appears not to have slackened this year. The firm’s most recent transactions include a pair of take-privates: the $10.7 billion acquisition of Anaplan, a cloud-native platform for orchestrating business performance, and the $6.9 billion acquisition of SailPoint, a provider of enterprise identity security.

Thoma Bravo also invested $60 million in Vivian Health, a healthcare employer-employee matchmaking software developer. It expects to eventually take the company public, PE Hub reported.

Orlando Bravo, a one-time tennis star born in Puerto Rico, shares leadership of Thoma Bravo with co-founder and managing partner Carl Thoma and managing partners Seth Boro, Scott Cabrill, Lee Mitchell and Holden Spaht. The team operates from offices in Chicago, Miami and San Francisco.