Partner Insights
AI is transforming private equity due diligence, making it faster, smarter, and more accessible.
At Worth Media Group’s reception with ToltIQ, leaders across finance gathered for an evening exploring how artificial intelligence is transforming private equity. The highlight of the event was a fireside conversation between Ed Brandman, CEO and founder of ToltIQ, and Dan Costa, where Brandman unpacked how his company is reimagining 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 firsthand how little the diligence process had evolved. “The only thing that changed since the 1970s,” he noted, “is that data rooms went from physical to virtual.” Despite decades of innovation elsewhere in finance, the diligence process remained a manual, time-consuming “race against time” between signing an NDA and closing a deal.
ToltIQ was born to smooth that terrain—just as its name suggests. The term “tolt” comes from an Icelandic horse gait that allows the animal to move swiftly and smoothly across rough landscapes. Brandman’s goal is to help investors navigate the complex terrain of data with the same grace: by using AI to make diligence faster, deeper, and more efficient.
At its core, ToltIQ uses advanced context engineering and intelligent retrieval systems to connect millions of pages of disparate documents—financial statements, legal agreements, technical analyses—into a single, queryable intelligence layer. By combining frontier large language models with proprietary methods for curating and structuring relevant context, ToltIQ delivers answers that would otherwise require analysts to manually synthesize information across dozens of sources. ‘We talk about it as talking to documents,’ Brandman explained. ‘If you can pair a good question with curated context, you can get amazing results.’”
This approach, he said, doesn’t just automate diligence—it democratizes it. Smaller firms, which previously lacked the manpower to perform deep diligence, can now use AI to match the sophistication of the largest private-equity shops. Real-world results have been dramatic: one client reduced the work of a ten-person offshore team to just two people onshore, cutting the process time in half. Another condensed a 40-hour analysis of a real-estate credit portfolio into just 2.5 hours.
Beyond efficiency, ToltIQ is expanding how AI tools are applied within deal teams. Clients now use it for purchase and sale agreement reviews, for negotiating counterparty terms, and even for drafting communications based on synthesized data—all while maintaining security and accuracy within a virtual data-room environment.
Looking ahead, Brandman predicts 2026 will be the year when every major firm formalizes an AI strategy, with widespread transformation arriving by 2027. “We’re going to see systematic, enterprise-scale changes in how people do their work,” he said. His long-term vision? “To be the Bloomberg terminal for diligence.”
The evening underscored a pivotal moment for private equity and finance more broadly: as AI evolves from experimentation to implementation, firms that embrace intelligent automation will redefine what’s possible in dealmaking. Through platforms like ToltIQ, the traditionally opaque and time-intensive world of due diligence is becoming faster, more accessible, and more insight-driven—marking the start of a new era where technology doesn’t replace human judgment but amplifies it.
