Only 2 of 47 software deals we covered addressed customer contracts

Only 2 of 47 software deals we covered addressed customer contracts

When Progress Software finished buying the Domo platform on 22 September 2026, the announcement carried a price ($400 million in cash), a completion date that came about two months before the 30 November the buyer had first expected, and a customer count of more than 2,400. What it left out, in our report of the deal, was anything a Domo customer could file. Neither party said whether the Domo product name will continue. The company that sold the business has renamed itself Huckleberry.ai and no longer runs the product, so the name on the other side of every Domo contract, data processing agreement and invoice changed on completion, and the only account we found of what happened to those contracts came from a trade-press report of the deal terms, not from either party.

That gap turned out to be the rule. Between 22 September and 9 October 2026 we published 31 news items on software acquisitions and mergers. Read deal by deal, they describe 47 transactions: six items are round-ups of two to five deals each, and one deal appears in two items and is counted once. For every deal we recorded what the announcement told the customers of the product being bought. The result is lopsided. Ten stated a price. Twenty-three gave a date or a period for completion. Nineteen described what the buyer intends to build. Seventeen carried some promise that the product, service or company would carry on. Two said anything about contracts, data processing, hosting or data location. And not one deal paired a promise of continuity with a word on contract or data terms.

What 47 announcements told the customers, counted

We counted what the parties announced, as our items recorded it from releases, filings and FAQs. Where an item did not say, the answer is no. The questions were:

• Was a price or consideration stated (a cash sum, a per-share price, or a share count)?
• Was a completion date or expected completion period stated, other than the day of announcement?
• Did a party say the product, service or acquired business keeps running for existing customers?
• Did anything in the announcement or its reporting address contracts, data processing terms, hosting or data location?
• Was the end of a product, its merger into another product, or a migration of customers announced, and was a date given?
• Did the buyer name an integration plan or a direction for the product?
• Were regulators' approvals mentioned?

Question	All 47 deals	25 deals with a full item	22 deals in round-ups
Price or consideration stated	10	5	5
Completion date or period stated	23	8	15
Continuity statement for existing customers	17	14	3
Contracts, data processing, hosting or data location addressed	2	2	0
Product end, merger or migration announced	3	2	1
Of those, with a date	1	1	0
Buyer names an integration plan or direction	19	16	3
Regulators' approvals mentioned	14	10	4

Of the 47, 21 were pending when we wrote them up, 23 had completed, and three (Infillion and Foursquare, VEGA and akenza, Supabase and Turso) were unclear. Every count comes from a per-deal sheet we keep, so each can be checked line by line.

Timing is the one thing pending buyers do say. Sixteen of the 21 pending deals gave an expected closing quarter, a vote date or a tender deadline, and 12 mentioned regulatory approvals. Among the 23 completed deals only seven gave a completion date, six of them in filings or exchange notices. Seven of the 21 pending deals and seven of the 23 completed ones carried a continuity statement, so completion made no visible difference.

Continuity is promised often and dated almost never

Seventeen deals carried some form of reassurance, and they are not all the same promise.

Some say the product stays. Databricks, buying the spreadsheet vendor Row Zero, said the standalone product "will remain available to existing users", and that it would keep supporting data sources beyond Databricks. Behavox told customers of Apiax that the current product and support continue unchanged. Libeo's co-founder, moving into Shine and Cegid, said "same product, same team, same conditions".

Some say the company stays. Volaris said Teknisa will keep operating as an independent business unit. SAP's plan is to keep TechWolf independent, headquartered in Ghent, and to keep the platform available to customers who do not use SAP, but SAP also said that this is subject to closing and required consultation. Weave said it will keep its name and Utah headquarters after a take-private by Francisco Partners, and Infillion will, by Axios's account, keep Foursquare as a separate brand that continues to sell data to customers using rival ad platforms.

Others name what will not be taken away. OpenZeppelin committed that released versions of its Contracts library stay open source and cannot be withdrawn, and BT framed its rescue of TalkTalk around continuity of service for 2.5 million customers.

Almost none carries a length. Only two of the 17 put a period on the promise: Bluevine's, where accounts, pricing and terms stay the same until closing, and Boost.ai's, where existing contracts are unchanged until closing. In both the period is the time before the deal completes, which is exactly the stretch when little was going to change anyway. "Remain available to existing users" is a statement about now. Others are plainly intentions: SAP's, above, and Harness's, whose chief executive said nothing is taken away from Augment Code users while nothing was said about their subscriptions, pricing or data-handling terms.

Two deals touched contract terms. Domo's customer contracts are described as part of the asset transfer by Utah Business, not by Progress or Domo. The other, Sendcloud's FAQ for Sendy users, is the only party-published material in the set that discusses terms: it says rates or conditions of some shipping options may differ slightly and that it has not yet confirmed that existing carrier pickup agreements will carry over. Neither is a data processing term. Nobody in the 47, as far as our items record, said anything on hosting location, processor identity or sub-processors. In at least six items we noted outright that the release was silent on contracts or data handling: Salesforce and Listen Labs, Harness and Augment, Infillion and Foursquare, Boost.ai, Zeta Global and Senso and Accenture and Mjølner.

Buyers by type, and where the parties sit

Four buyers were financial sponsors or their acquisition vehicles: Francisco Partners for Weave, Main Capital's vehicle for Tribal Group, Epiris's for Gamma Communications, and a Ridgeview Partners vehicle for Pinewood.AI. One more buyer, Adlib, is backed by Diversis Capital. The other 42 were operating companies. All four sponsor-led deals gave a vote date, tender deadline or effective date. Two gave a per-share price. One carried a continuity statement. None addressed contracts or data. Among the 42 operating buyers, 15 did.

On geography, buyers' countries are stated for 26 of the 47 deals and targets' for 34. Where both are stated (19 deals), 12 cross a border: for example Adlib in the United States buying Paperbox of Ghent, Ryan of Texas buying Comtax of São Paulo, Luno of South Africa buying GTXN of Nairobi, and Behavox of London buying Apiax of Zurich. Seven are domestic. The counts are too small to say more.

The clocks that are already running

One deal in the set gave customers a date on which part of their product stops. Sendcloud announced on 5 October that it had bought Sendy, and creating shipments in Sendy ends on 31 October 2026, 26 days later. Other account data stays available until 31 December 2026, and historical invoices can then be requested from Sendcloud's customer support. Sendcloud has prepared an account for every Sendy customer, and its FAQ is candid about what cannot move: passwords, integrations and API connections, brand settings and smart shipping rules.

Two more deals announced a migration or merger without a date. Inworld bought Ultravox, and its release said Ultravox customers would be upgraded to Inworld's Realtime TTS-2, with no timeline in the sources we read. HCLSoftware said Robotiq.ai will become part of HCL UnO Agentic, and expects the purchase to close in November 2026, so the merger date, if there is one, falls after that. The OpenZeppelin deal is a reminder that a product's end can sit outside the deal announcement altogether: the company said in June 2025 it would retire its Defender platform on 1 July 2026, and neither 2026 announcement mentions it.

The other dates in the set are closing and decision dates, and each is a point at which a buyer's leverage changes:

• Pinewood.AI's scheme was due to take effect on 9 October 2026, with the listing cancelled by 12 October, so its dealership customers moved to a privately owned supplier on that date.
• Weave's stockholder vote is on 22 October 2026, completion is expected in the fourth quarter, and the agreement's outside date is 18 February 2027, extended automatically to 18 May 2027.
• Gamma's shareholder meetings are on 20 October, and the Takeover Panel gave a rival bidder until 13 October to make a firm offer or walk away. Tribal's vote was set for 2 October with a rival approach on the table. SYSTEX's tender was extended to 5 November because Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission was still reviewing it. Those three are in one dated round-up. BASE's tender runs to 15 October and Plurilock votes in November, in another.
• AMD expects World Labs to close by the end of 2026, SAP expects TechWolf in the fourth quarter, Automation Anywhere expects Boost.ai in the same quarter, and Salesforce expects Listen Labs between November 2026 and January 2027.
• Softcat expects GDT by the end of the first quarter of 2027, Bluevine's sale to Valley National Bancorp early in 2027, and Schneider Electric's purchase of PTC by the third quarter of 2027.

Until completion, existing agreements stand. After it, whoever owns the vendor can review pricing, packaging and support, and a buyer who waits for the notice of change has often waited past the contract's own protections.

Seven documents to pull before the closing date

None of the 47 announcements gave a customer enough to rely on, so the work shifts to paperwork the buyer already holds. This is the order we would take it in, whether or not your vendor is among the 47. Have counsel read anything that matters.

1. The assignment and change-of-control clauses in the master agreement. Find out whether the vendor needs your consent to assign the contract, whether a change of control gives you a right to terminate, and how much notice you are owed. In an asset purchase like Progress and Domo, or Harness and the Augment Code products, the contract has to move to a new company, so assignment is the live clause. In a share purchase the contracting company often stays the same and the change-of-control clause is the one to read.
2. The order form and renewal date. Subtract the notice period from the renewal date and put that date in the calendar next to the buyer's expected closing. If that date falls before closing, you may have to decide before you learn anything.
3. The data processing agreement and the sub-processor list. Check which company is named as processor and how you are told about changes: by email, by a page you must watch, with or without a right to object. Ask for the current sub-processor list in writing. In healthcare, as the Weave item points out, confirm that the business associate agreement carries over unchanged.
4. The hosting and data location schedule, including backups. Behavox's Apiax customers were told the product continues, and were not told whether contracts, data processing terms and hosting move to Behavox entities. Ask the question that was not answered.
5. The support schedule, service levels and any clause on withdrawing a product. Look for the notice the vendor must give before ending a product or a version. Sendy's customers had 26 days from the announcement to the end of shipment creation; a clause that says nothing is the thing to ask about.
6. Price protection. Look for a cap on renewal increases or a price lock. If there is none, a change of owner is the natural moment to ask for a price hold, ahead of the buyer's first pricing review, and to ask for it in writing.
7. The exit and export terms. Check the formats you can export in, the transition assistance on offer and the period during which you can still get your data after the contract ends. Then test an export once, before you need one.

Then write to the vendor and ask for answers by a date. Which legal entity holds my contract after completion, and will it change? Is the product continuing, under what name, and until when? Do the data processing terms, sub-processors and hosting locations stay as they are, and if they change, with how much notice? What happens to my renewal price? Is there a plan to move me to another product, and on what commercial terms? An answer that is an intention, like SAP's, is worth recording as an intention. An answer with a date is worth holding the vendor to.

File the reply with the contract, set a review for about three months after completion, and compare the next invoice and product notice with what you were told.

What 31 items can and cannot show

The sample is 31 news items, which are what our desk reported between 22 September and 9 October 2026, not every software acquisition announced in those weeks. Some deals were announced earlier, such as Softcat and GDT on 17 September; we count them because we reported them in the window. The selection is ours, and the set includes a few deals that are not software products in the narrow sense: a fixed wireless equipment business, a telecoms rescue, a handful of IT services and marketing firms.

We counted only what the parties announced. A release that says nothing about contracts does not mean the contract says nothing, and a buyer can answer these questions privately to customers without publishing them. What the table measures is what a customer reading public announcements could learn.

Two parts of the set are thinner. Round-up entries are short summaries of a deal, so a missing item there may be our editing rather than the party's silence; that is why the table separates the 25 deals with a full item from the 22 in round-ups. The continuity count is 14 of 25 in the first group and 3 of 22 in the second, a gap that probably reflects write-up size. The Supabase and Turso deal appears here through our funding item, which is about the funding, so its entries are thin too.

Some calls are judgement calls. We counted Progress's contract transfer as addressing contracts because a trade-press report covered it, though the parties did not. We counted exchange approvals as regulators' approvals for Plurilock. BT's cash estimate for the financial year covers more than the purchase price, so we did not count it as a price. We counted a company-level promise, such as keeping a business unit independent, as a continuity statement even where it says nothing about a particular product. Counting them the other way would move some numbers by one or two but not the main finding.

We publish no totals of deal values and no ranking of deals by size. The 47 are a sample of announcements, not the software market.

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