For private equity
Where the value sits in a portfolio.
Reading AI readiness across companies you already own, in a form that compares. A company can only answer these questions about itself. A fund can answer them across everything it holds.
Where to start
Four questions the portfolio has to answer.
Each one is answerable from evidence rather than from a status update, and each one reads across the whole portfolio.
Where does value sit above the model layer, and where underneath?
Exposure is a position that can be read now, not a date to be predicted.
Which companies are actually ready, and which only look ready?
Confidence and capability produce very different readings.
Who inside a company has to own this for it to survive?
The wrong sponsor is the most common cause of a stall.
What gets built once, and what has to be built inside each company?
Some of this is portfolio infrastructure. Most of it is not.
Question one
Exposure is a position, not a forecast.
Every company sits somewhere relative to the models. A company building above them becomes more valuable as the models improve. A company selling what the models are about to do for nothing becomes cheaper on the same schedule.
How to read it
Ask what a company would still own if the model layer absorbed the feature it sells today. What remains is domain-specific data, embedded workflow, and customer trust. Those assets get stronger as the models improve. A feature does not.
Why it concentrates
Every software company in a portfolio meets this at the same time. Holding many companies does not spread the exposure the way it spreads most other risks, which is what makes it a portfolio question rather than a company one.
Question two
A grade that reads the same way in two companies.
Readiness is graded against evidence across eight domains. A company sits at its weakest domain rather than its average, which is why a strong showing in six of them can still leave a company at the bottom of the scale.
Weakest gate sets the grade
Measurement on its own is common now. A grade that reads the same way in two different companies is not, and it is the part that turns a status update into an allocation decision. It also separates a company that cannot, which is missing capacity, from one that will not, which is missing a sponsor.
Where the grade usually breaks
Security is the domain that stops a rollout, and the one companies score themselves highest on.
Most companies can name the model they use. Fewer can name the identity their agents hold, or say what that identity can reach.
A company that cannot answer this will pass its own internal review and fail its customer's. In a portfolio, that shows up as a deal cycle that lengthens without anyone being able to say why.
Question three
The wrong sponsor is the most common cause of a stall.
Below a certain revenue scale, nobody is accountable for the operating infrastructure inside a company. AI then defaults to the product organization, where it is measured on what ships, and internal work loses that contest every time. These are conditions for a value creation plan rather than terms in a vendor conversation.
What to insist on
- A sponsor who can change how the company works
- Named dedicated people, confirmed in writing
- A team that is not also shipping the product
- One workflow chosen before any build begins
What we have seen
Protected time on top of a full role does not move a schedule. Named capacity does. Named capacity is the single largest predictor of whether the work lands, and that finding came out of live delivery rather than theory.
Question four
What travels between companies is method, not data.
Built once, held by the fund
- The readiness grade and how it is scored
- The enforcement pattern and the shape of policy
- The proof standard, so results compare
- A pattern memo showing which constraints repeat
Built and owned locally
- Business data, which never leaves the company
- The workflows themselves
- Systems of record, which survive as inputs
- The people who own the intent
Nothing about one company's business moves to another. Under a mutual non-disclosure agreement, each company's materials remain their own, and nothing moves between companies unless the owners approve.
How we engage
Three offers, in sequence.
Each is priced on its own and nothing later is automatic. The fund decides every next step on the evidence from the step before it.
The briefing
Half a day for product and engineering leaders across the portfolio. No preparation and no environment access. Teams leave with shared vocabulary and a rubric for locating the constraint in their own process.
The clinic
Up to six companies at a time, three people from each. Every company brings one capability heading into delivery, writes it against the same minimum contract, and leaves with a finding and an action list.
The pilot
One company and one live capability, run end to end through that company's own process. It closes on agreed evidence and a readout that separates what was observed from what was inferred.
The fund funds the part that produces the comparison. The company funds the part that changes how it works, because only the company can carry that change.
Where we sit
The layer underneath the build.
Many funds now have engineers embedded across the portfolio. We do not do that job, and we do not offer a competing version of it.
Build capability
- Sprints, cohorts, prototypes, shipped features
- Produces output
- Measured by what got launched
- Moves fastest at the start
Governed substrate
- Enforcement, record, proof, comparable readiness
- Produces evidence
- Measured by what can be repeated
- Compounds over time
The substrate is what keeps that output durable and comparable once several teams are moving at once.
What is actually at stake
Which of your companies does the work, and which becomes the data feed?
Agents are in production and the work is moving to whatever software can carry it. Some products will do that work. Others will be read at the API layer by one that does.
Every company you hold meets this at the same time. It is the one exposure a portfolio cannot spread.