Arma Partners delivers another exceptional year as AI reshapes the Digital Economy
In a year dominated by AI news and themes, Arma Partners delivered another strong result, generating well over €100m of revenue from 30 deals announced in the past 12 months, despite ongoing geopolitical volatility and regulatory and economic uncertainty. Sector deal activity and valuations have recovered after a slow start to the year but have been heavily skewed by AI driven transactions and, lately, US-centric mega-deals. Private Equity continues to sit on large amounts of dry powder, but an environment focused more on distributions to LPs than new capital deployment has led to very selective buyer activity. Against this backdrop, Arma has continued to deliver results and enhanced its position as Europe’s leading advisor to the Digital Economy. We grew our team meaningfully at all levels and continued to deepen our senior bench, particularly in our Fintech and Data practices, as we develop our next generation of talent.
Software was again Arma’s most active sector in 2025, delivering another exceptional year for the franchise. Despite challenging market conditions, we continued to execute landmark transactions across Europe, advising on the majority of European deals valued above $1 billion.
Vertical SaaS was a key focus for investors, with sustained demand for highly sticky, workflow-embedded platforms built on deep, proprietary datasets. Notable transactions included IFS’s significant minority investment from Hg, ADIA, CPP Investments and others at a €15 billion valuation; the sale of Totalmobile to Five Arrows and DBAG; and KKR’s acquisition of Infobric. Legal and Compliance software remained a highly sought after category, evidenced by Cinven’s acquisition of Smart Communications; Wolters Kluwer’s acquisition of Brightflag; and the sale of Namirial to Bain Capital. Strategic acquirers continued to turn to M&A as they sought new growth avenues to address product and workflow gaps and to accelerate AI-led innovation. This was reflected in our work on the sale of Hornetsecurity to Proofpoint; the sale of Admincontrol to Euronext; and Datasite’s acquisition of Grata.
The growing need for accurate, timely and trusted data for corporate and investment decisions, as well as for AI more broadly, was evidenced by a flurry of deals in our Data & Analytics franchise. Notable landmark transactions included the sale of Aurora Energy Research, the leading global provider of mission-critical data & software analytics to the power sector, to TPG Rise & CDPQ; and the merger of Law Business Research with ALM, creating a global leader in legal intelligence, analysis, and networking solutions. We also advised two of Europe’s largest data, software and information services groups, Infopro Digital and WGSN, on their successful acquisitions of Eucon and IWSR respectively.
We continue to see strong momentum in FinTech, particularly in financial software and RegTech, where large, international end markets and strong tailwinds (from digitalisation, regulation and optimisation) are driving solid and consistent growth and resilient, highly sticky business models. Sponsors continue to seek out category leaders in fragmented markets with attractive consolidation potential, as we saw in TA’s acquisition of smartTrade and Montagu’s acquisition of Multifonds. We also advised FundApps on its sale to FTV, a landmark transaction in the fast-growing RegTech sector where we expect to see sustained strong activity over the next 12 months.
Within Cloud and Services, we observed a meaningful pivot towards data and application services, with providers moving closer to their customers’ client-facing processes. AI-enabling services and AI-native operators began to emerge as distinct categories, propelled by advances in automation and new delivery models. A key Arma transaction was the sale of 3Cloud, one of the largest independent Microsoft Azure and AI enablement specialists, to Cognizant in the US. In Europe, we reaffirmed our market-leading position in cloud services with the sale of Skaylink to Vodafone and Solvinity to Kyndryl, both benefiting from sovereign cloud trends and the ongoing shift to public cloud.
Having raised over €3bn in recent years supporting clients from Series B to Pre-IPO rounds, we continued to extend our Private Capital capabilities to new and growing technology subsectors. Two recent mandates exemplify this: raising €170m for next-generation AI consumer hardware company Nothing Technology from a syndicate including Tiger Global, Highland Europe, EQT Ventures, GV and others; and advising on a Series B round for i6, a leader in fuel management software for the aviation industry, led by Yttrium.
Outlook
The rapid evolution of AI is shaping strategy and dealmaking across the Digital Economy. While much of AI M&A activity to date has centred on the infrastructure layer, driven largely by Big Tech’s efforts to secure model, compute, and data advantages, we expect Agentic AI at the application layer to gain significant traction in 2026. This development will position AI as a primary catalyst for M&A, as acquirers seek solutions capable of orchestrating complex workflows, automating multi-step processes while delivering measurable productivity improvements for end-users. M&A outcomes will continue to be impacted, with companies that are “AI-resilient” or “AI-advantaged” attracting strong buyer appetite, while others fail to attract interest as investors cannot underwrite the perceived or real AI downside risk.
We end the year optimistic about the opportunities in 2026 and beyond, given the Digital Economy’s continued rapid transformation. As AI shifts from experimentation to deployment at scale, we anticipate it becoming a key driver of consolidation, product expansion and strategic investment across all sectors. Our deep cross-sector knowledge and ability to draw upon extensive global connectivity with investors and businesses at the vanguard of this transition leave us uniquely well-positioned to guide our clients through this significant evolution.
We are incredibly grateful to our clients for their trust and loyalty and to our outstanding team for their commitment. We remain dedicated to delivering exceptional outcomes for our clients as we continue to serve as trusted, long-term advisors to the sector.
We wish you and your loved ones a restful festive period.