Every PE firm has its own philosophy on how hands-on to be with the companies it owns. Some run a central playbook that sets vendors, go-to-market and hiring across the whole portfolio. Others back the management team and stay out of the way. Most sit somewhere between. Where a firm sits on that line tells you where the buying decision lives, and whether to sell to the firm, the company, or both.
Owners run left to right in the same order as the line above. Under each owner: how many software companies it holds (software only, not its whole portfolio), its playbook, center of excellence and procurement set-up, and how to approach it. Then its software companies, stacked by vertical in the same order as the key. Company names link to their homepages.
One row per owner and software company; non-software holdings are not listed. The owner, vertical and type filters above the family tree apply here too. Search also highlights matching names in the family tree.
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Data. Everything on this page is drawn from two tables published with it, firms.csv and portcos.csv. Correct those and the page follows.
Coverage. Software only: each firm's non-software holdings are left out. Every current control-position software company from each firm's own site (or deal announcements where the site doesn't mark control), pulled 1 Oct 2026. TA lists majority and minority stakes together. Constellation shows its operating groups plus notable deals, not its 1,000+ business units. Rows marked "medium" or "low" are ones where control or current status is not fully confirmed.
Revenue. Apollo's estimated annual revenue, not ARR. Use it for rough sizing. Merged companies (Salesloft + Clari, for example) often carry the estimate for one half only. "Check" marks figures that look low for headcount.
PE universe inset. Each dot is 1% of the ~1,200 PE-owned US software companies; 48 dots = the 580 companies here. Dollar math: $3.8T total PE-owned company value (Bain, June 2026) × ~18% software share of US PE deal value in 2025 (PitchBook) ≈ $650B; the $117B is the sum of Apollo revenue estimates for the 8 fully enriched firms, so the dollar comparison rests on an assumed revenue multiple and is indicative only. The ~33,000 PE-owned companies figure is from Bain's 2026 Global Private Equity Report (midyear update, June 2026); the ~1,200 US PE-owned software companies figure is PitchBook data as of 30 June 2026, reported by the Wall Street Journal on 7 July 2026. The 580 is this page's own count of unique control-position software companies (Constellation excluded). Our list includes non-US companies, so the shares are order-of-magnitude comparisons, not measured percentages.
Placement. Vista sits furthest left because its operating procedures are mandated across the portfolio; Blackstone's purchasing organization is opt-in, so it sits just to the right. The score behind each firm's position is an editorial judgment from public evidence of central purchasing, portfolio-wide vendor deals, playbooks and control. "None found" means no public evidence, not proof.
An independent pass re-checked the firm claims against their sources and spot-checked ownership, revenue and classification across the company table. Everything it could not confirm is listed here, together with rows the data itself flags. Items the audit found to be wrong have been fixed in the tables and are no longer listed. What remains is suspect, unverified or outdated: it stays as published, with the doubt shown.
| Owner | Company | Field | Claim as published | Verdict | What the check found | Status | Source |
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Revenue flags in the company table: check = low for headcount; suspect = the audit found public figures far from the estimate; dropped = implausible, removed; mismatch = Apollo returned a different or parent company, record rejected. Ownership rows marked "medium", "low" or "audit:" have control or current status not fully confirmed.