Descriptions:
Bloomberg Technology sits down with Holden Boro, a managing partner at Thoma Bravo, to get the private equity firm’s view on how AI is reshaping the cybersecurity landscape across its roughly $8 billion portfolio of security companies — including Proofpoint, SailPoint, Darktrace, and Ping Identity. Boro’s central argument: AI models capable of discovering zero-day vulnerabilities in minutes are forcing security teams to operate at speeds that traditional defense postures were never designed to handle, but the same network-effect advantages that make companies like Proofpoint (with 14,000 customers feeding daily threat telemetry) valuable also give them a structural edge in responding to AI-driven attacks.
The conversation covers Thoma Bravo’s recently announced partnership with Google for full-stack AI deployment across its portfolio, and Boro addresses the wave of similar announcements — Anthropic with Goldman Sachs, Bain with OpenAI — framing them as the industry’s attempt to establish working relationships with model providers before the governance questions around agentic AI deployments become urgent. On model strategy, Boro is explicit: Thoma Bravo is “model agnostic,” maintaining active relationships with Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI simultaneously.
Boro also weighs in on inference cost dynamics, acknowledging that model providers are currently absorbing costs to gain market share but warning enterprise customers to plan for a future where pricing normalizes. For investors, enterprise IT leaders, and security professionals trying to understand how institutional capital is positioning around AI, this interview offers a grounded, strategy-level view from one of the most active acquirers in the enterprise software space.
📺 Source: Bloomberg Technology · Published May 05, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
