Thoma Bravo Managing Partner Orlando Bravo: AI Can Rewrite Code, But Not Enterprise Software's Liability Promise
Thoma Bravo managing partner Orlando Bravo argued on the Semafor podcast that the real threat AI code generation poses to enterprise software is overstated, because enterprise software sells not code but domain expertise and liability assumption. He illustrated with Dayforce, an HR-software company acquired in 2025: what customers buy is 'paying employees on time, correct deductions, and taking the liability if anything is wrong,' not source code.
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Thoma Bravo oversees $170 billion in investments, nearly all of it in corporate software — the very sector AI coding tools claim to replace at lower cost. Speaking on Semafor's Compound Interest podcast, Bravo said the software industry has been doubted four times before, and each time it boomed after the doubt: 'It'll be the same thing this time.' He argued that what actually determines a moat is not code itself but the depth of domain expertise and how difficult it is to replicate. He cited Dayforce, an HR-software company Thoma Bravo acquired in 2025: what customers buy is not source code but the promise that 'I will pay your employees on time, their deductions will be right, and their amount on their paycheck will be right. And if they're not, I take the liability for it.' 'Somebody could try to recreate their code,' Bravo said. 'Great. The business is not about that.' He also warned that the coming IPOs of 'monster companies' like Anthropic and OpenAI will crowd others out of the capital markets — bad news for the private-equity industry, which is sitting on an estimated $3.8 trillion backlog of unsold companies.