Sarah Tyler

Three years ago, our firm closed a deal on a promising manufacturing portfolio company. The due diligence had been thorough—or so we thought. Six months post-acquisition, we discovered significant operational inefficiencies that our traditional analysis had missed. The financial impact was substantial, and it became clear that our conventional approach to deal evaluation needed a fundamental upgrade. That moment marked the beginning of our journey into artificial intelligence adoption, a transformation that has since reshaped how we approach every stage of the investment lifecycle. The integration of AI in Private Equity isn't a theoretical exercise—it's a practical evolution driven by necessity. Over the past several years, I've witnessed firsthand the challenges, failures, and successes that come with deploying intelligent systems across deal sourcing, due diligence, portfolio management, and exit planning. These lessons, learned through real implementations at firms man...

Private equity firms approaching artificial intelligence adoption face a landscape crowded with vendor promises, consultant frameworks, and competitor announcements that make it difficult to separate signal from noise. The gap between AI Service Excellence in theory and AI Service Excellence in practice has swallowed considerable capital and credibility across our industry. Yet firms that approach implementation systematically—with clear evaluation criteria, realistic expectations, and disciplined execution—are achieving transformative operational advantages in due diligence, portfolio management, and investor relations. The difference between successful and failed implementations rarely comes down to technology selection; it comes down to methodical preparation and execution across dimensions that many firms overlook in their rush to deploy. This comprehensive checklist emerged from analyzing both successful and failed AI Service Excellence initiatives across dozens of private equity...