Socure raises at a $5.2bn valuation and buys agentic operations platform Fravity

This is the shape the AI premium actually takes: an established software business with real revenue buys a capability it can attach to that revenue immediately, and raises at a price that assumes the attachment works. Not a model, not a demo — a distribution channel with something new plugged into it.

Our hatch on the technology segments exists for exactly this case. We draw AI monetization as a zone above the band rather than folding it into the band, because the businesses that clear the bar are a minority and the ones that clear it look like this one: identifiable revenue that would not exist without the AI capability, sold to customers who were already paying for something else.

The counter-case is the software business with an AI roadmap slide and no attributable revenue. Buyers have become fast at telling the difference, and the diligence question is now blunt: show me the invoices where the AI feature is the reason for the line item.

If you can answer that with documents, you are reaching into the hatch. If you can only answer it with usage statistics, you are in the band, and arguing otherwise costs you credibility on the numbers you actually can prove.