Global Tech in 2025 and What Comes Next in 2026 

Regulation, resilience and why continuity is back on the board agenda

By Nathan Hopkins, Chief Revenue Officer, The Escrow Company

If you only skimmed global tech headlines in 2025, you might assume the sector is booming without friction. In reality, the picture is more nuanced. Growth is strong in many regions, yet funding conditions, exit routes and operational pressures are far more challenging than they were even a few years ago. 

Across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, one theme is consistent. Third party resilience is no longer optional. It is becoming an expectation from boards, regulators and enterprise buyers. 

This article brings together the global developments that shaped 2025 and examines how they are influencing continuity planning, third party risk and the role of software escrow and SaaS escrow. 

Global tech in 2025: strong headlines, uneven foundations

Global tech ecosystems continue to attract significant investment. In Europe, for example, the latest State of European Tech report shows the United Kingdom leading the continent with approximately USD 14 billion raised in 2025, placing it ahead of France and Germany and reinforcing London as a major capital hub. 

Valuations also remain high in several ecosystems. Tech Nation’s 2025 analysis values the UK tech sector at around USD 1.2 trillion, making it the largest in Europe. 

However, global IPO markets have been subdued. London raised only about GBP 160 million in IPO proceeds in the first half of 2025  and similar softness has been seen on Nasdaq and in Asia, where companies have opted for trade sales or private funding rather than public markets. 

Corporate insolvency trends have also been rising across multiple jurisdictions. PwC analysis indicates that UK corporate insolvencies remained near multi decade highs throughout 2024 and into 2025.

In the United States, bankruptcy filings are on the rise in the second half of 2025, signalling mounting financial pressures on both households and businesses.    

For customers and legal teams, the takeaway is global. Tech remains innovative and investable, but exposed to shocks. That exposure is what keeps operational resilience and continuity high on board agendas worldwide. 

A tougher regulatory climate on third party dependencies

Europe: DORA and the first “critical ICT” list 

In November 2025, the European Supervisory Authorities published the first list of 19 critical ICT third party providers under the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).

These include major cloud, infrastructure and telecoms providers supporting EU financial services. 

Once designated, providers face direct oversight around resilience testing, incident reporting and concentration risk. Although DORA applies to EU financial entities, its expectations influence the procurement standards and risk assessments applied to all software vendors that support them. 

United Kingdom: parallel regime for critical third parties 

The UK has rolled out its own Critical Third Party (CTP) framework for financial services. Although no providers have been designated yet, Treasury has signalled that the first designations are expected by late 2026. This mirrors DORA’s intent: preventing systemic disruption caused by failure of key technology providers. 

Middle East and GCC: national resilience strategies accelerate 

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar continue to push national strategies for cloud adoption, digital infrastructure and cybersecurity. Saudi Arabia’s CST recently published its Software Escrow Guideline, signalling that business continuity in the software supply chain is now a regulatory topic in the region – not just a commercial one. 

Other GCC regulators have also expanded their operational-resilience rules, including more prescriptive frameworks for third-party risk, incident reporting and digital infrastructure. 

Asia Pacific: operational resilience becomes central 

Australia’s CPS 230 regime, came into effect in 2025, places stringent expectations on outsourcing, business continuity and operational risk. 

MAS in Singapore continues to tighten third-party-risk management expectations under its TPRM Guidelines. 

Japan and South Korea have published updated cloud-risk and cyber-resilience recommendations for financial institutions. 

Collectively, these frameworks show global convergence: infrastructure risk, concentration risk and software-vendor dependency are now regulatory topics in every major market.

Market structure: software escrow and SaaS escrow are global services, and the market is maturing

Behind the scenes, the software escrow market itself is changing. 

One large provider has grown through acquisitions, including the 2021 purchase of Iron Mountain’s Intellectual Property Management and software escrow business, and the 2024 transfer of customer portfolios from a failed software escrow provider. In 2025, its parent group announced that it is exploring “strategic options” for the escrow division, including a potential sale, with reports of private equity firms considering bids.  

Analyst reports also project strong growth for software and SaaS escrow globally, with multiple market studies forecasting high single digit to low double digit compound annual growth over the rest of the decade. Driven by increased cloud adoption, regulatory scrutiny and the need for independent continuity mechanisms.  

For beneficiaries, the message is that software escrow has become part of a much larger conversation about operational resilience and third-party risk in regulated sectors. For vendors, it is increasingly viewed as a hygiene factor when selling into financial services, the public sector, other regulated environments and enterprises who rely on third-party applications as part of vital business processes.

AI, continuity and a new generation of dependencies

AI adoption accelerated globally in 2025. Research by Barclays shows that nearly nine in ten businesses surveyed in the United Kingdom plan to increase AI investment. 

Similar trends are reported across North America and Asia, where AI budgets continue to rise. 

AI introduces new continuity challenges: 

  • SaaS products may rely on external AI services or models that vendors cannot control. 
  • Training data, fine-tuned weights and prompt libraries often become essential continuity assets. 
  • Model behaviour can evolve over time, complicating recovery, validation and legal responsibility. 

From a legal and risk perspective, AI does not change the core issue. These are still third-party dependency and continuity challenges, especially when using solutions from innovative but less mature vendors. 

What this means for legal teams, clients and software vendors worldwide

For legal teams advising customers 

  • Third party risk expectations are increasing in every major market. 
  • DORA, the UK CTP regime, CPS 230 and GCC digital resilience frameworks all require clearer mapping of dependencies, continuity expectations and recovery capabilities. 
  • Contracts are shifting toward more explicit continuity, exit and transition arrangements. 

For beneficiaries of software escrow 

  • Funding pressures and insolvency risk remain material in global tech, even where ecosystems show strong valuations. 
  • Regulators focused on concentration and supplier resilience view credible continuity arrangements positively. 
  • Software escrow can support internal audits, supervisory reviews and board reporting. 

For software and SaaS vendors 

  • Enterprise and regulated buyers will continue to ask detailed questions about cloud hosting, AI dependencies, data pipelines and subcontractors. 
  • Vendors who weave resilience and transparency into their sales process early will progress more smoothly through procurement. 
  • Software escrow or SaaS escrow, supported by verification or continuity testing, can accelerate deal cycles and reduce objections where operational resilience is a key criterion. 

In Summary  

Across all markets, the trajectory is consistent. Regulators, boards and enterprise buyers want credible answers to the question: What happens if the vendor cannot operate under unforeseen circumstances?

Greater scrutiny is being placed on suppliers during due diligence and onboarding. Building trust between vendors and clients relies on structured, transparent approaches to continuity. Vendors who integrate this into early discussions will stand out.  

Others may experience longer procurement cycles, especially as buyers become more risk-aware.  

At all events I have been to this year, AI has been a huge topic and it’s clear that investors are increasingly focusing on AI innovation and related products. This means many will be making considerable bets on who’s going to win, when not everyone can meaning some of those new AI startups and scaleups will fail.

Those who succeed, will take out legacy market players and cause disruption.

The companies without an AI first focused product may also struggle for additional funding, have limited growth, and also find it difficult.

As a result, change brings opportunity but there will be many who can’t keep up, and end user clients should account for worst case scenarios and consider solutions to mitigate such challenges to ensure their technical projects are a success.