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Welcome back to article 3 of the AI x PE weekly series reboot. You can find the latest post and original pilot series here: part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, and 4 here.
My PE investor friends sometimes ask: “when doing diligence on a target, how do we know if the company is actually using AI in a meaningful way?” In a world of marketing fluff (sorry bankers, we know you’re doing your job), we want you to leave this newsletter with the ability to identify the seven most common AI slop phrases on a CIM, and how to figure out if the claim is legit.
We also have a busy October ahead at Road To Carry, with hands-on AI for PE workshops (AI for Deal Screening, AI for Market Mapping & Sourcing, AI at Portfolio Companies) and a new partnership with Chariot Labs to help our network bring AI into their portfolio companies. Scroll to the mid-section for upcoming dates, registration details, and more on the partnership below.
If you’re an AI or tech provider serving the PE ecosystem interested in supporting AI To Carry series with sponsorships, please reply to this email with your company website and budget!
Several PE and indy sponsor backed portfolio companies in the Road To Carry network have worked with Chariot Labs, and the feedback I’ve heard has been very positive, with all engagements leading to additional projects. So if you’re interested in how AI can be embedded into portco to drive real value creation, reach out!
Chariot Labs helps PE-backed companies identify and prioritize where AI can create value, then embeds AI engineers to build and deploy those workflows into their existing systems.
Founded by former PE investors and AI engineers, we specialize in business services, industrial services, and multi-site retail. Our engagements range from field services companies to education services, and include work within the Apax portfolio.
Want to know how your competitors are using AI? Book a free call with the Chariot Labs founding team today.
Let’s dive into today’s topic: calling AI BS on a CIM.
State of Play
Hi I’m Davis—an ex-PE investor who’s spent the last two years building and deploying AI tools across the world's largest investment banks, hedge funds, and private equity firms. Every Wednesday, Edwin and I will be closing the gap in AI knowledge in PE, one use case at a time.
You probably remember the Amazon Go story. "Just Walk Out" was pitched as computer vision magic, cameras and sensors watching you pick up a bag of chips and quietly billing you as you walked out the door.
Except it turned out that a large chunk of the "AI" was roughly a thousand reviewers in India watching video and tagging transactions. Well, the company you are doing diligence on right now could also be doing that. You just don’t know.
That gap between what a company says its AI does vs. what its AI actually does is a new diligence problem for PE in 2026. I had a banker friend describe his job to me last month as: half of it is coming up with creative phrases to call a target "AI-native."
He gave me an example from a live process. A team member mentioned one morning that his daily briefing email now takes him five minutes instead of twenty, because he pastes the raw inputs into ChatGPT. That sentence became, on the CIM: "AI-native operating model with ~7% labor cost reduction on select AI-enabled workflows."
Hilarious. CIMs are like LinkedIn for businesses.
