The bifurcation is here.
The repricing is selective. It's hitting companies that can't prove their performance will hold — and rewarding the ones that can.
PE firms are sitting on a nine-year backlog of unsold companies by the Wall Street Journal's more conservative count — same message as PitchBook's eleven. The backlog exists because investors' AI worries are weighing directly on efforts to exit software holdings.
The companies that built durable value are finding buyers. The ones that can't prove they created anything beyond financial engineering are stuck. The repricing is selective: it's hitting the companies that can't prove their performance will hold, and rewarding the ones that can.
The bifurcation sorting winners from the rest isn't coming. It's here now. The operating teams that move first — that accept today's reality and adjust their plans to build value operationally — will have more options than the ones that wait for the market to turn.