Drew Baglino

So we have seen billions of dollars of loans tied to U.S.

software and U.S.

tech slipping into distressed territory.

Now, amid all of this concern, we have had a couple of private software firms actually opening their earnings books a little bit early to investors in a bid to calm nerves, to say that our earnings and our revenue are trucking along just fine.

So we had the likes of McAfee, which showed that it's

Fourth quarter revenue held steady at about 626 million compared to the year earlier.

We had rocket software, which actually saw a 5% increase in 2025 revenue.

And we had Perforce software, which actually saw a slight decline, but it was just a slight decline.

So the aim here is to say we're software firms, but we are actually benefiting or we are handling or we are dealing with the AI threat.

Right.

Well, I mean, a lot of this debt is actually senior secured, which means it is backed by collateral.

It is high in the repayment line.

They would have to see really significant impairment to experience any losses or significant losses.

So this is one of the arguments that the private credit industry is coming out with at the moment in defense of software.

saying, you know, our software loan books look good.

In fact, Blue Owl Capital said it wasn't seeing, let alone red flags, it wasn't even seeing yellow flags in its software loan portfolio.

And we've heard the same sort of sentiment from a number of them.

And also saying that it's a bit too early to see any degradation in software right now.

Well, this is, as you alluded to earlier, big tech's big tobacco moment.

It's the moment that tech accountability organizations like mine, as well as countless parents who have been touched in some way by the harms that social media addiction have caused,