Here's how private credit bosses are defending their software bets as markets scrutinize Blue OwlNEWS | 07 March 2026Months of concern over the private credit industry finally coalesced this year into its first real reputational crisis.
Blue Owl, a buzzy private investor specializing in loans to the software industry, has seen its stock crater following growing redemption requests across its non-traded private credit funds and market jitters over the impact of AI disruption on software companies.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, redemption requests across the industry were up nearly 3 times from the quarter before at 4.5% of fund net asset value, according to Fitch Ratings. Blue Owl's tech-focused fund had by far the most redemption requests of the non-traded funds tracked by Fitch, at 15.4%, and has become the avatar of private credit's exposure to the "software-apocalypse."
With market watchers concerned that generative AI will make many software-as-a-service companies obsolete, the general angst about private credit over the past few months has now found a target in software loans.
During its February earnings call, Blue Owl's CFO Alan Kirshenbaum looked to assuage concerns by stating that software loans make up only 8% of the firm's total assets under management.
And this week, at the Bloomberg Invest conference and on CNBC, other private credit bosses had the chance to assuage fears that they were in too deep on software bets. They didn't mention Blue Owl by name (though interviewers mentioned them to some, like Apollo's Marc Rowan and Ares's Michael Arougheti), but they were doing their best to explain why software loans weren't a risk to their funds.
Here's what top private credit players said about their software exposure.Author: Alex Nicoll. Source
