Artificial intelligence is impacting every industry in the region, challenging status quo operations, making businesses more efficient and in some cases, forcing employees to wonder how secure their jobs are. In fact, local companies in the private equity space are tapping into generative AI and treating it like a consultant for fundraising, portfolio investments and fund operations.
But will private markets ever operate without people? It’s unlikely, say the experts.
The human element can’t be replaced, said Kyle Asman, managing partner of Windermere’s Backswing Ventures.
“On a first fundraising round, relationship and rapport are what it’s all about, because you don’t have much else to go off. At that point, AI is helpful for gathering data and getting the information on who to reach out to, but I really don't think it's possible to automate the fundraising process. There's so much human involvement and personality involved,” he said.
Using AI as a research tool has quickly become standard practice at 1858 Capital Partners, a Winter Park-based mergers and acquisitions advisory firm.
“One thing that AI is very helpful with is taking data sets and analyzing them in a much shorter period of time than a person here at the firm can do it,” said Executive Director Jay Chaudhari. “That will never replace a staff member. It’s more of a support.”
Chaudhari said his firm looks at industry-specific key performance indicators (KPIs) prior to meeting with a company that wants to sell, and that AI helps gather, analyze and clean that information so it can be used in a presentation for the company.
“It really only gets you 70% of the way there, and then you have to go in and check everything and finalize it,” he said.
Because easy-access AI support is still an emerging phenomenon, leaders need to be quick on their feet when establishing operations and communicating policies for their teams. Using AI as a resource and not a decision-maker is quickly becoming a best practice across industries where generative AI and machine learning are harnessed.
In a September 12 panel discussion about AI held at Greenberg Traurig, P.A. in Orlando, panelist Jacques Fu, founder of learning management startup Senseily, described his company’s offerings:
“We use generative AI to create an entire curriculum for a client, to create slides and diagrams. AI does every part of the instructional design process and produces a course. Then the client goes through and reviews it. But essentially, the first draft is done,” he said.
Health care is also seeing AI play a role, especially when it comes to diagnostics.
Lake Nona-based Fountain Life layers newly-developed AI capabilities on traditional brain and body scans.
“We use computer vision AI to help analyze the scans we're doing for people,” said CEO Dr. Bill Kapp.
When Fountain Life performs a whole body MRI looking for asymptomatic disease before it becomes symptomatic, about 10,000 images are collected.
“The human eye is really good about reading some things and historically radiologists have read these scans and do a great job, the human eye cannot pick up the subtleties in some of these findings,” he said. “It doesn't replace the doctor, but what it does is give the doctor a better copilot. With all this information, the doctor can distill down into areas that don't become so cumbersome that we lose the patient in all the data.”
In other words, whatever the industry, however AI is used, people still steer the ship. People are still the ones to decide which AI tools to use, and there are many.
Chaudhari said when his company created content for a new website, the team used ChatGPT to generate blurbs. “Rose.ai is a good one, too. Quite frankly, I think it's better than ChatGPT,” he said.
Added Asman: “I've even heard about some API [application programming interface] plugins that help you source information better, even through PitchBook. PitchBook has millions of contacts, and the API sorts through to find the ones that are most relevant to you."
And, according to Asman, larger funds have access to even more sophisticated options, creating their own tools. “Blackstone has a fifty-person data science team and recently started a products division where they're building bespoke AI solutions for funds.”
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