THE DEAL INTELLIGENCE BRIEF · ISSUE 5 · MAY 2026
A monthly view of human capital risk and value creation for private equity, built on Deltabase culture, workforce and talent data covering 5,500+ companies and 11M employee reviews.
May made one thing plain: private equity is now both financing AI adoption and being judged on it. TPG, Advent, Bain Capital and Brookfield backed OpenAI's new deployment business, THL found a strategic buyer for AMI, and S&P Global flagged how many software assets have been held for five years or more. In each case the deal team faces the same question: will the workforce carry the AI plan, or stall it?
Lucie Odell, Deltabase
What happened: On 11 May, OpenAI launched the OpenAI Deployment Company with more than $4bn of initial funding from a syndicate of 19 firms led by TPG, with Advent International, Bain Capital and Brookfield as co-lead founding partners. It is acquiring Tomoro, a London-based AI consultancy, and will embed engineers inside enterprise customers to help them move from pilot to production.
The Deltabase lens: The gap between pilot and production is often a people gap. At Microsoft, employee sentiment on Tech in Workplace rose from +21.4% in 2024 to +26.2% in 2025, while Supportive Leadership fell from −10.2% to −24.6%. The tools are landing; the leadership experience around them is not keeping pace.
So what: If the investment thesis depends on AI-led productivity, diligence the managers who will lead the change, not only the technology stack.
What happened: Announced on 4 May, Lattice Semiconductor agreed to acquire AMI, the platform firmware and infrastructure manageability business majority-owned by THL Partners, for $1.65bn. AMI is expected to generate over $200m of revenue in 2026, and completion is expected in the third quarter.
The Deltabase lens: Engineering-led cultures can strengthen when demand for their skills rises. Arm Holdings, another chip-design business in the Technology Top 100, improved from +24.4% to +37.9% between 2024 and 2025, the largest gain in the peer set. Only Amazon also improved, by 0.6 pts to +6.2%.
So what: A strategic acquirer will compare the target's culture with its own. Sellers who can evidence stable or improving engineering sentiment strengthen the equity story and reduce retention discounts.
What happened: S&P Global Market Intelligence reported on 6 May that over 27% of private equity-backed software portfolio companies were acquired five or more years ago, as the exit outlook for long-held software investments dims.
The Deltabase lens: Longer holds mean more years of culture history for the next buyer to examine. Meta Platforms fell 9.4 pts in a single year, from +16.8% to +7.5%, and SAP fell 5.9 pts to +10.1%. Over a five-year hold, swings of that size can appear and reverse more than once.
So what: Set a year-by-year culture baseline at entry, so that a dip in year four or five is explained to the next buyer rather than discovered by them.
+7.8%: the median Employee NSS across nine Technology Top 100 companies in 2025, down from +12.4% in 2024. Only two of the nine improved.
| Company | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arm Holdings | +24.4% | +37.9% | +13.5 pts |
| Salesforce | +15.8% | +13.3% | −2.5 pts |
| Microsoft | +12.4% | +10.9% | −1.6 pts |
| Meta Platforms | +16.8% | +7.5% | −9.4 pts |
| Amazon | +5.6% | +6.2% | +0.6 pts |
| Sector median (9 companies) | +12.4% | +7.8% | −4.7 pts |
Source: Deltabase Culture data, Employee Net Sentiment Score (−100% to +100%), 2024–2025. Sector median across Apple, Amazon, Arm Holdings, IBM, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and SAP (Technology Top 100 companies with 100+ reviews in each year).
Both overall scores eased in 2025: Microsoft from +12.4% to +10.9%, Salesforce from +15.8% to +13.3%. The topic detail tells two different stories. Microsoft gained on Tech in Workplace (+26.2%) and Learning & Development (+54.9% to +60.1%), but Career Progression fell 12.3 pts to −47.8% and Supportive Leadership fell 14.4 pts to −24.6%. Salesforce held Career Progression broadly steady at −37.6% and lifted Tech in Workplace from +4.7% to +9.1%, while Supportive Leadership slipped 7.4 pts to −27.0%. Both are pushing AI hard; Microsoft's employees are feeling the career and leadership strain more sharply.
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Sources: The Next Web (11 May 2026); Ropes & Gray (May 2026); S&P Global Market Intelligence (6 May 2026); Deltabase Culture data.