Alpine Investors built an $18.5 billion private-equity firm around an unusual wager: in a business obsessed with deals, the scarce asset is the person who can lead what comes next.
Sumeru Equity Partners writes growth checks for software companies that already work - then tackles the messier problem of making them scale. Its real product is a combination of capital, operator time and a remarkably specific checklist for growth.
For 35 years, a growth-equity shop outside Baltimore has skipped the seed-stage lottery and bought into companies once they already work - then rolled up its sleeves.
Thoma Bravo has spent two decades turning enterprise software into private equity's most repeatable playbook - roughly $180 billion in assets, more than 580 companies acquired, and a cybersecurity portfolio most governments would envy.
Robert F. Smith made one unfashionably narrow bet in 2000: business software deserved its own investment machine. Twenty-five years, $103 billion in assets and more than 650 transactions later, Vista is testing whether that machine can make the leap from SaaS to agentic AI.