AI is transforming private equity due diligence, making it faster, smarter and more accessible.
HAS Worth Media Group Reception with ToltIQexecutives from the world of finance gathered for an evening exploring how artificial intelligence is transforming private equity. The highlight of the event was a fireside chat between Ed Brandman, CEO and founder of ToltIQ, and Dan Costa, during which Brandman explained how his company is reinventing one of the most entrenched processes in finance: due diligence.
Brandman’s inspiration for ToltIQ came from his 11-year career at KKR, where he saw how little the diligence process had evolved. “The only thing that has changed since the 1970s,” he notes, “is that data rooms have gone from physical to virtual. » Despite decades of innovation in other financial areas, the diligence process has remained a manual and time-consuming “race against time” between signing an NDA and closing a deal.
ToltIQ was born to level this ground, as the name suggests. The term “tolt” comes from an Icelandic horse gait that allows the animal to move quickly and smoothly through rugged landscapes. Brandman’s goal is to help investors navigate the complex terrain of data with the same grace: using AI to make diligence faster, deeper and more efficient.
At its core, ToltIQ uses advanced contextual engineering and intelligent retrieval systems to connect millions of pages of disparate documents (financial statements, legal agreements, technical analyses) into a single, searchable layer of intelligence. By combining large-scale language models with proprietary methods to organize and structure relevant context, ToltIQ provides answers that would otherwise require analysts to manually synthesize information from dozens of sources. “We talk about it like we’re talking about documents,” Brandman said. “If you can combine a good question with an organized context, you can achieve amazing results. »
According to him, this approach does not just automate diligence: it democratizes it. Smaller companies, which previously lacked the staff to conduct in-depth diligence, can now use AI to match the sophistication of larger private equity firms. The real-world results were spectacular: one client reduced the work of an offshore team of ten people to just two people onshore, thereby cutting process time in half. Another condensed a 40-hour analysis of a mortgage portfolio into just 2.5 hours.
Beyond efficiency, ToltIQ expands how AI tools are applied within deal teams. Customers now use it to review purchase and sales contracts, negotiate counterparty terms, and even draft communications based on synthesized data, all while maintaining security and accuracy in a virtual data room environment.
Looking ahead, Brandman predicts that 2026 will be the year that every major company formalizes an AI strategy, with widespread transformation by 2027. “We’re going to see systematic, enterprise-wide changes in the way people do their jobs,” he said. His long-term vision? “Be the Bloomberg Terminal of Diligence. »
The evening highlighted a pivotal moment for private equity and finance in general: as AI evolves from experimentation to implementation, companies that embrace intelligent automation will redefine what is possible in trading. Thanks to platforms like ToltIQ, the traditionally opaque and time-consuming world of due diligence is becoming faster, more accessible and more knowledge-driven, ushering in a new era where technology does not replace human judgment but amplifies it.
