84% of PE firms have appointed a Chief AI Officer. Nearly half are investing between 25–50% of their total budget in AI, with 38% expecting to spend more than half next year (EY, 2026).

The strategic commitment is there. The harder conversation can be making sure the investment case behind it is built on the right criteria.

Why the internal case stalls

95% of funds report their AI initiatives are meeting or exceeding their original business case criteria - but those cases were often conservatively scoped, meaning the full value is still being underestimated (FTI, 2026). The reason is usually the same: the measurement framework is wrong from the start.

Most AI business cases in PE make one or more of the same mistakes. They measure activity rather than output (queries run or documents processed) rather than whether the firm is screening more companies per analyst or closing deals faster. They often miss measuring the baseline, meaning any improvement claim is unverifiable without knowing what the current process actually costs.

Compounded value - faster deal execution, reduced ramp time for new hires, institutional memory that compounds over time - gets left out entirely. And a business case missing key inputs will underwhelm the room every time.

The difference between optimising and reimagining

EY's research draws a distinction worth paying attention to. Firms taking an optimisation approach, using AI to make existing workflows faster, are seeing positive ROI. But firms that use AI to reimagine how work gets done are realising two to three times the benefit from the same investment.

The gap isn't in the technology. It's in the ambition of the business case built around it.

The most forward-looking PE firms aren't treating AI productivity gains as a cost reduction story. They're reinvesting those gains into new capabilities, new workflows, and competitive positioning, using AI as a growth catalyst rather than only an efficiency play (EY, 2026).

The numbers, when modelled across the full deal cycle rather than a single workflow, tend to surprise because the cost of not having AI is higher than most firms have calculated.

Our Find My ROI Calculator

We've built a framework and an interactive calculator specifically for this conversation, where you can discover what AI's actually worth to your fund in under 30 seconds.

Capsa’s Find My ROI Report provides a structured way to model the value of AI infrastructure for your specific firm, with your own AUM, team size, and deal volume. It's designed to be filled in and taken into a partner meeting, all in under 5 minutes.

Access the report and the calculator → here.

The question now is not whether to invest in AI. It's how to invest to create real differentiation.

Don't miss future insights. Subscribe to the Deal Intelligence Brief here.