As described by Puls Biznesu, the artificial intelligence revolution has changed the rules of the game on the IT services market, putting private equity funds that invested in the sector during the pandemic boom under pressure.
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The demand for programmers has dropped
Code writing automation has reduced global demand for traditional programming services. As a result, investors stopped buying software houses whose activity is limited to selling the production capacity of development teams. In 2025, there were only a few such transactions in the CEE region, and not a single transaction in Poland.
According to “Puls Biznesu”, according to the analyzes of Michał Przybylski, founder of the Zeema consulting company, in the years 2018–2024, half of M&A transactions in IT were based on the purchase of “capacity”. The boom occurred in 2021–2022, but in 2025, none of the 13 transactions in Poland was motivated by this model. According to the expert, this is a permanent change and the old way of building value will not return.
The situation is further aggravated by falling valuations. Since the January premiere of the Claude Code tool, public valuations of companies from the IT services sector have fallen by an average of 30%. Meanwhile, many funds are running out of investment horizon, which means there is a risk of selling companies at a loss – especially those purchased during the period of the highest valuations.
Examples of problems are becoming more and more visible. The sale of Software Mind from the portfolio of Enterprise Investors and Ailleron was suspended due to the unfavorable economic situation. Similar challenges may apply to STX Next, controlled by Innova Capital. According to Zeema's report, approximately 300 of the 2,000 software houses operating in Poland have a scale that allows them to participate in consolidation – as a buyer or as a takeover target.
Investors are more selective
However, not all IT companies are losing their attractiveness. As described by “Puls Biznesu”, a spectacular example is the sale of Callstack from Wrocław at a valuation of PLN 500 million. The key to success turned out to be specialization and unique competences – companies offering unique knowledge do not suffer from the investment downturn to the same extent as traditional software houses.
According to Michał Przybylski, the highest valuations in 2025 will be achieved by companies offering competences in areas such as AI, data or cybersecurity. Investors are more selective, the volume of transactions is smaller, but attractive entities still find buyers. The problem of the Polish market is not the lack of demand, but the mismatch of business models to the new reality.
The current advantage of many Polish IT companies was based on nearshoring and relatively cheap programming work. Today, maintaining large development teams is increasingly becoming a financial burden rather than a competitive advantage. An example of transformation is Netguru, which – as previously described by “Puls Biznesu” – reduced its team from over 900 to approximately 400 people.
Will IT expenses increase?
Experts indicate that the future belongs to companies building their own solutions, domain knowledge and industry specialization. Examples include: Univio (e-commerce), Appsilon (pharmaceutical, open source) and Deepsense.ai, cooperating with Anthropic and OpenAI.
Although the IT services market will not return to the growth rate seen during the pandemic, a gradual recovery is possible. IT spending is expected to grow by 7-8%, mainly thanks to AI, but the effect will be further consolidation. Specialized players will achieve the highest valuations, while traditional service providers will shrink or be acquired at low multiples.
