PE Beat: The Robot Doesn't Vote

The Robot Doesn't Vote

Advent International is running more than 80 AI initiatives across 30 North American portfolio companies. The one its managing partner wanted to talk about sits in the investment committee and is not allowed to vote.

"We have an IC AI robot. I want to be clear, that robot does not have a vote." John Maldonado described a tool trained on Advent's committee memos plus the questions members have historically put to deal teams, so it learns what the room cares about. Its tricks are the comparisons humans find tedious: what changed in this memo since it was last presented, and which assumptions differ across concurrent deals that should not. Three months in production, and pointedly not a decision-maker: "it's not replacing our judgment. It's just enhancing it."

Maldonado was in this column last week. This is part two of the same interview, and it does not repeat itself. What is new is the discipline underneath the AI talk. Exits no longer happen to good assets: "deals are happening, but they're earned and not given." Advent now makes deal teams interview the buyers they name in the memo before the deal is done, and ask why they are not at the table today. "Pricing is bifurcated. The best assets are clearing at still fantastic prices."

The market-wide version came from Kate Hopkins, whose firm OneGuide published a catalog of 36 AI value creation plays and sells the advisory work behind them. The demand is not mysterious. As one of the Funcast hosts put it, "in the world of no more multiple expansion, dead isn't as available, profit margin improvement is going away."

The honest read is that most of what works is small. Hopkins likes revenue leakage detection, which she calls "finding money in the couch cushions of your portfolio companies." Maldonado's list is similarly grounded: process automation, consumer intelligence, core operating workflows, with churn the standout. Nobody claimed a thesis-changing result. Her warning is about what the rush leaves behind, "AI project debt that we're all accruing." and the fashionable hire does not exist: "There is no one AI expert. Or if there is, they are massively, massively, massively expensive."

At the other end of the market, the week's highest-yield operating move involved no software. Dustin Winter, a commercial banker who bought a Minneapolis garage door company in 2020, took commission out of his technicians' pay and rebuilt it into base salary. He says reviews went from roughly 270 to around 4,000, and the curve did not bend until the incentive changed. He demoed AI phone answering, checked references with other operators, and passed: "there's the sense that maybe some things aren't ready for prime time, and maybe they're not as reliable as we had hoped."

Eighty initiatives at the top of the market. At the bottom, a pay change and a polite no.

Sources: John Maldonado (Advent International), Dry Powder, "Exits, AI and Asking 'What's Next?' w/ Advent International's John Maldonado," Aug 18, 2026. Kate Hopkins (OneGuide), Private Equity Funcast, "How PE Firms Are Actually Using AI Right Now (w/ Kate Hopkins, OneGuide)," Aug 19, 2026. Dustin Winter (Metro Garage Door), Think Like an Owner, "Crafting an Enduring Team with Dustin Winter - Ep.285," Aug 18, 2026.