There’s no shortage of conversation around AI in private equity right now. New tools, new models, new use cases. But most of that discussion is focused on the wrong thing.
It centers on the model - which model to use. How powerful it is, and what it can do. In reality though, that’s not where advantage comes from.
A recent article in FinTech Weekly from our Founder and CEO Phil Westcott, explores how leading firms are starting to shift their thinking. The focus is moving away from model selection and towards something far more important: the context those models operate on.
Because models are quickly becoming commoditized.
Access is widespread. Capabilities are improving across the board. Over time, most firms will have access to broadly similar AI performance. That means the differentiator isn’t the model itself, it’s what you feed into it.
Your proprietary data, your institutional memory, your relationships, insights, and historical decisions. And crucially, how all of that is structured, connected, and made usable.
This is where we see many firms still struggling.
Data is often fragmented across CRMs, documents, third-party providers, inboxes, and spreadsheets. It sits in silos, often unstructured, and rarely in a format that LLMs like Claude can consistently work with. As a result, even the most advanced models can end up producing shallow or inconsistent outputs.
Firms who are working successfully with agentic AI, are taking a different approach.
They are investing in the foundations that allow their AI to operate effectively. Not as a one-off tool, but as something embedded into how the firm runs. That means creating a unified layer of context where data is continuously updated, connected, and accessible.
When that foundation is in place, AI becomes far more powerful.
It can surface opportunities earlier. Monitor markets continuously. Prioritize the right companies. Support deal teams with relevant, timely insight. And do so in a way that reflects how the firm actually thinks and invests.
In other words, the model matters far less than the environment it operates in.
If you’re thinking about how AI fits into your firm’s strategy, this is a useful perspective shift: Read the full article