Digital enterprise management provider BMC Software Inc. is considering a leveraged buyout of rival software company CA Inc., according to a new report.

Bloomberg, which first reported the story, said the two companies have approached banks with a view to putting together a debt package in order to finance BMC’s purchase of CA. Talks are still at an early stage, which means there’s no guarantee an agreement can be reached, Bloomberg said, citing people familiar with the process.

A leveraged buyout refers to a transaction in which the buyer raises a large amount of debt in order to finance an acquisition. If the deal goes ahead, it would be the largest leveraged buyout of a technology company since Michael Dell and Silver Lake Management purchased Dell Inc. for $25 billion back in 2013.

CA’s share price closed at $31.58 on Tuesday, before rising 17 percent to $36.67 in after-hours trading, valuing the firm at $13.9 billion.

BMC is owned by the private equity firms Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital, which paid around $6.9 billion to acquire the company and take it private in 2013.

Bloomberg says leveraged buyouts of this kind were popular in the last decade but have become relatively rare since 2008, when the financial crisis caused banks to impose tighter rules on lending. There were 19 leveraged buyouts worth more than $10 billion between 2005 and 2007, but only two since then – the deal involving Dell Inc. and Apollo Global Management LLC’s $12.3 billion buyout of ADT Corp. in 2016.

CA, which builds mobile and cloud-based software applications, is probably most famous for becoming the first software company in the world to hit $1 billion in annual revenues, which it did in 1989. The company has made some notable acquisitions itself in recent years, most recently agreeing to buy application security testing startup Veracode Inc. in a $614 million cash deal in March.

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