Select portcos and align sponsors
Choose the first 1-2 companies based on readiness, operational friction, and likely speed to value. Align the executive sponsor, access, and ROI frame before day one.
PE & PORTFOLIOS
Value creation at portfolio speed.
You know AI should create value across the portfolio. The question is where to start. Every portco has valuable institutional knowledge locked in people's heads and undocumented processes. AE helps PE firms capture that knowledge, identify the workflows where AI can move EBITDA, ship the first automations in weeks, and turn early wins into a repeatable portfolio playbook.
FIRST ENGAGEMENT
Start with 1-2 portcos.
Deploy an Embedded AI Operator into one or two portfolio companies, prove value on real workflows, then use the results to decide where the portfolio playbook should expand next.
Map workflows and rank opportunities
The operator interviews frontline teams, walks the actual systems, and ranks automation opportunities by EBITDA impact, implementation effort, data readiness, and adoption risk.
Ship automations and quantify ROI
Build and deploy 2-4 practical automations, document the handoff, measure hours recovered, cost saved, or revenue created, and recommend the next portcos to target.
WHY AE
Why PE firms work with AE.
We understand portfolio economics: margin expansion, operating partner leverage, first-quarter speed, and clean handoff to management teams. The same operator who maps opportunities at one portco can move to the next. Learnings compound across your portfolio. We ship production results, not strategy decks.
- One AI-native team deployed across multiple portfolio companies
- Embedded operators ship automations in weeks, not quarters
- Practical AI readiness assessments grounded in real systems and workflows
- Portfolio-wide pattern recognition: what worked at one portco informs the next
- Institutional knowledge captured and structured so AI can act on it and portco teams retain it through transitions
- Full documentation and handoff so portco teams can run what we build
- Clear ROI framing: EBITDA impact, hours recovered, cost saved, revenue created
HOW WE ENGAGE
How we work across your portfolio.
We typically start with one or two portcos, prove value, then expand across the portfolio as the pattern becomes clear.
Embedded AI Operator per portco
A senior operator embeds with each portfolio company. Discovery, automation buildout, deployment, and documentation. $10K/week, 3-week minimum sprint. Most portcos see 2-4 automations in production by week three.
Learn more →Portfolio-wide AI strategy
Readiness assessments, opportunity mapping, and knowledge architecture across multiple portcos. We help your operating team capture institutional knowledge, build a portfolio-wide AI thesis, and create a repeatable playbook grounded in what's actually possible at each company.
Learn more →Production AI builds
For the high-value bets that need a full team. Senior pods ship production AI systems: pricing models, document intelligence, workflow automation, customer-facing AI products.
Learn more →RESULTS
Results that move the portfolio.
90% less back-office overhead
Global Shop Solutions
AI document ingestion turning invoices and vendor quotes into structured ERP data. The kind of operational automation that scales across portcos with similar back-office complexity.
Read the case → 22 min vs. days
KPS Mart
AI-powered furniture proposal generation. What used to take designers days now takes 22 minutes. The kind of workflow compression that compounds across a portfolio.
Read the case → Multi-year embedded partnership
Dermsquared
Ongoing embedded partnership with a PE portfolio company in healthcare. Projects include Polaris, an AI search engine across 20+ years of dermatology content, now live with physicians.
Read the case →LET'S TALK
Bring us the hard problem.
We'll bring the team that ships.
Get in touch [email protected]